


hold on i still need you

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Canon Typical Horror, Dreams and Nightmares, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix-It, Found Family, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Possession, Role Reversal, Stanley Uris Has The Shining, Stanley Uris Lives, Temporary Character Death, canon side relationships (benbev and stanpatty), domesticity but slightly fucked up, mentions of abuse and toxic relationships, pennywise is a sadistic motherfucker, side of mike/bill/audra, tam lin au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-01-27 17:28:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 94,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21395941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: “Don’t get possessed by a clown monster, Eds, it’s just not worth the cool shit you can do.”“There’s nothing cool about living in a sewer and being possessed by the thing that tried to eat you,” says Eddie.“Exactly,” says Richie.or: Richie saves Eddie, but dies in his stead. a month later, Eddie starts dreaming of Richie, and soon finds out that he's not quite dead yet—It's possessed him, but Richie's fighting back. he can't hold on forever, though, so the Losers, especially Eddie, race against the clock to save Richie from Its clutches. and in the meantime, Eddie has to wrestle with his feelings for his childhood best friend, awakened by Richie's last words.(alternately: Tam Lin, but gay and with a clown instead of fairies!)
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 497
Kudos: 551
Collections: It Faves





	1. wait for me, i'm coming

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't going to upload this until it was finished, but I have had a shitty day today. I crave the validation.
> 
> fic title is from Chord Overstreet's "Hold On".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from "Wait For Me" from _Hadestown_.
> 
> **content warnings:** vague allusion to suicide attempt (Stan, who survived it in this AU). possession and body horror. allusion to a toxic relationship and to past major character death. Pennywise being a huge creep and likening a young girl to meat.

Eddie dreams of Richie for the first time a month after Derry, and three weeks into a long, acrimonious divorce from Myra.

Okay, that’s probably a lie. He’s had dreams featuring Richie before, memory-dreams where they’re kids playing Street Fighter, wet dreams where Richie lays him out on the bed and touches him all over, and nightmares of Neibolt—of Richie over him, the relief in his eyes before Pennywise’s claw skewered him right through. Of Richie lying on the cavern floor holding his hand and whispering _I love you, god, I loved you so much._ Of blood soaking through Eddie’s fingers, try as he might.

They’d had to drag him out kicking and screaming. Stan was badly hurt and needed immediate medical attention, and It had knocked them all around something fierce, broken bones and probably caused a lot of internal bruising and some internal bleeding. They couldn’t have brought a dead body out with them, none of them had enough strength in them left.

But—

Well, what’s _logical_ doesn’t really matter to Eddie’s heart, doesn’t it.

_God, I loved you so much._ Richie’s last words still bounce around his skull, regretful and sad, _resigned_. So it’s not the first time he’s had a dream about Richie, before.

But—well, usually Eddie’s dreams are much less detailed than this.

He’s standing outside the Toziers’ old house in Derry. It had been a cozy, homey old place, two stories and an attic, with a tree that you could climb that led you directly to Richie’s window. Whenever Richie was grounded for his conduct grades (which was every quarter), Eddie would scurry up the tree and knock on his window. It doesn’t look the same now in real life, the tree has long since been cut down and the house remodeled somewhat for the new family living in it, but here in the dream it looks the way it did when they were kids. It looks so _real_, too.

As Eddie watches, a red balloon floats out of the doorway. His heart climbs right into his throat at the sight of it, and unwillingly, his body turns to follow it, to chase after it. _Stop!_ he wants to scream at himself. _Stop, stop, stop, you know what those are, you know what those lead to, stop running towards It stop—_

He turns the corner, but instead of the leper, or Pennywise, he just sees Richie, nervously tapping his fingers against his knees, near a storm drain that the balloon disappears into. And it’s _Richie_, no doubt about it, there’s the crack in his glasses, there’s the jacket he was wearing when he died, there’s Eddie’s ratty old hoodie being worried in his hands. And there, too, is the gaping hole in his chest where It skewered him right through.

“Richie?” Eddie breathes.

Richie jerks his head upward. “Eds!” he shouts, and jumps to his feet. “Eddie, _Eddie_, help me—”

He doesn’t get far. A white hand shoots out from the storm drain, and a horrible cackling noise fills the air like an air raid siren in a war movie. _**come back home, richie,**_ Pennywise’s guttural voice sings, and yanks hard. Richie hits the ground with a scream, nails scrabbling at the concrete in a futile effort to keep from being dragged into the sewer.

“_Eddie! Help!_” he shrieks. Eddie moves fast, trying to catch his hand, but all he seizes is thin air, because with a burst of strength, It yanks Richie into the darkness with an evil laugh, mingling with Richie’s terrified screams.

Eddie’s knees hit the ground, and he stretches a trembling hand out towards the storm drain—

—and wakes up.

“What the _fuck_,” he says.

\--

The thing about grief is—

Myra had screamed and cried, when Eddie came back to get his things and go. She’d cajoled and demanded and wailed, asking why he had to go, why he had to leave her _alone_. She’d said, _I’m the only one who can take care of you, Eddie! You know that! Please let me take care of you!_ She’d clung the whole way, and maybe in another world that would’ve been enough to make Eddie stay.

Only all he could think of was Richie, pushing him out of the way of the claw. _God, I loved you so much,_ he’d said, resigned, knowing that he would die. If Eddie had to be asked what love was like, just after that, he would’ve been too paralyzed with shock and heartbreak to answer.

But if he’s asked now, he thinks he’d say this: love is not just wanting to take care of someone, as much as that’s a big part of it. Love is seeing someone and knowing, in the pit of your heart, that you would die for them, even if it meant losing your chance. Love means you get _hurt_, means you have to hurt because it’s you opening up the parts of yourself you hide away from everyone else to someone else. Love doesn’t mean _hiding_ something to please someone.

Love and grief go together.

Myra hadn’t gotten it, of course. She had tried to push him into therapy with her therapist friend, but he’d googled the guy and not been impressed to say the least. She had screamed at him, asking him to think about her just this once, why was he always thinking about himself these days, and he’d shouted back at her, _I just lost someone I loved! Can’t you see that? Can’t you take the fucking blinders off your eyes? I lost someone I loved and the only thing you’re thinking of is how to fix me so you can have some—some fucking doll to coddle! I’m sorry, but this is not something you get to fix! I am not something that you get to fix because you’re not fucking happy!_

They haven’t talked, since then. He regrets shouting at her, yeah, but he doesn’t regret what he said. He hopes, sincerely, that she finds someone she can love, one day.

Mike calls him, a week after Eddie’s first dream of Richie. “I’m gonna be in New York for the weekend,” he says.

“Oh, that’s great!” says Eddie, setting the old picture strip of himself and the other Losers on the bedside drawer. Richie’s there, grinning brightly at the camera, thirteen and so full of himself. He’d fought for this picture, for this little box of things that Myra had given up. “Do you need a place to stay? Tourist spots? God, please don’t say you want to watch _Hamilton_.”

“Fuck, I wanted to watch _Hamilton_,” says Mike, joking, and Eddie groans. “Kidding, man, I know how hard it is to get tickets. Yeah, no, Ben mentioned he had a place here in New York, he’s going to let me borrow it for the weekend. I have an itinerary already, but I wouldn’t mind adding a couple more places. Really, I was just planning to ask you if you wanted to have drinks.”

“God, yes, please,” says Eddie. “Divorce has been messy as hell. Myra wants half my stuff and I’m considering just letting her have it, but—well, principle of the thing, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” says Mike. “Know a good place with some really strong drinks, then?”

Eddie names a place in Queens off the top of his head, a bar that’s been there about as long as he can remember. He had never gone there, exactly, too worried over what could happen to him there, but now—well, he’s divorced, he’s between jobs, and he’s alive. Might as well. “See you there this weekend,” he says.

“You too,” says Mike, and cuts the call.

Not five minutes after that, as Eddie’s sorting through the rest of his box, Stan calls and says, “Hey, Eddie. Holding up okay?”

“Hi, Stan,” says Eddie, picking up a bird book. _Birds of North America,_ it reads. Stan’s book. He’d moved away from Derry before Eddie could give it back, but he can now. “Yeah, I’m—I’m fine. I actually just got a box of my shit back from Myra, and your old bird book is in here.”

“I wondered where that went!” says Stan. “Great timing, Patty and I are heading up to New York. There’s a teachers’ conference this weekend there that she’s been invited to speak at, and I was thinking maybe while she’s at it, we could head out for drinks, you could give me the book back?”

“You and Mike both,” says Eddie, dryly.

“Fold me in with him, then,” says Stan. “Someone ought to drive you both home. Might as well be me.”

“Like you’re not going to get drunk enough to do karaoke,” says Eddie.

“I could do that sober,” Stan says. Then he pauses, and says, quietly, “Do you want to talk about—well. Neibolt?”

_Richie,_ he means. They all heard, they all saw, they all mourned with Eddie after limping out of the hospital, six survivors out of lucky seven. Richie’s left a hole in all their hearts, an empty chair at a table for seven people, and they’ve all grieved his loss.

It’s just—

Eddie had loved him back. Loves him back. He knows that now, with the benefit of hindsight being 20/20 and all. The hole in his heart isn’t healing up, any time soon, especially with the strange dreams that he’s been having lately, but—he appreciates the effort. “No,” he says. “I’d rather not. But I can bring your book to the bar.”

There’s a soft exhale on the other end of the line. “All right,” says Stan. “I’ll swing by for it.”

He hangs up, and Eddie starts sorting through the rest of the box. That one’s Ben’s old New Kids on the Block album, he’ll save that for when Ben and Bev blow through New York again, maybe for the run-up to the Met Gala. This is Bill’s first book _Homecoming Queen_, the one that had actually been pretty good the whole way through. That is the book Bev lent him for English class that he’d forgotten to give back. And that—

His heart catches in his throat.

Richie had made him a mixtape before the Toziers moved away. He remembers now—climbing into Richie’s room, getting the mixtape, playing it and dancing along so raucously that old Wentworth had come up, told them to dance more quietly if they could to spare his ears, and then walked away with an amused chuckle. When Eddie had moved away, he’d always—he used to listen to this mixtape when he felt like shit, because the sound of it would soothe him, somehow. Which was dumb, but still.

He clutches it close to his chest now, as if it could somehow fill the hole in his heart that Richie’s left behind.

\--

Eddie dreams again that night, the fourth time in a week.

They’re sitting together in the clubhouse, and Richie’s back is to the shadows. He looks haggard, scared, but when he sees Eddie again he smiles, relieved. “Glad you could make it,” he says. “Hi, Eds.”

“You mother_fucker_,” says Eddie, before lurching forward and wrapping him up in a hug.

“Ow, _ow_, dipshit, my chest hole—” Richie pushes him away, and Eddie squints. Something’s off with Richie’s eyes. “Listen, I haven’t got much time to talk.”

“You’re fuckin’ dead, asshole, you can’t talk anymore,” says Eddie. “Fuck. I _miss_ you. We all miss you.”

Richie’s mouth opens, but he shuts it again, eyes gleaming wetly in the dim light. “Bet it’s all gloom and doom and depressing shit now, huh,” he croaks. “Without me around, I mean.”

“Fuck you,” says Eddie, wetly, his voice hoarse. “I take it back, we haven’t missed your trashmouth at all.” But he pulls Richie into another hug, more careful this time. After a moment, Richie lifts his arms and hugs back. “I’m sorry. I _tried_ to get you out, I swear, they had to drag me away from your body before the house came down on us all.”

“Don’t be,” says Richie. “Don’t, Eds, I mean it. You did everything you could, I’m just glad everybody else got out alive.” Cold, wet lips press against Eddie’s forehead, like a benediction, like forgiveness. “Hey, uh, Eddie, when I dropped that bomb on you—”

“Fuck you for dropping that bomb and dying right afterward, also,” says Eddie. “You started my sexuality crisis. Jesus.”

“I still got it,” says Richie, a ghost of a smile touching his lips before it fades away again. “No, but—can you just forget about it? Please?”

“Say one more word, asshole,” says Eddie. “One more and I’ll slug you. I don’t give a shit if you’re just something my brain made up because I’m grieving you, I fucking will. I _can’t_ forget it because it’s the _last thing_ you ever told me.” He breaks away, then, and frowns at the hurt written across Richie’s face. Is it just him, or has the clubhouse grown darker, somehow? Is it just him, or have the shadows grown longer?

“I’m real,” says Richie, “I’m real, Eddie, you have to listen to me, you have to warn them—”

“What are you talking about?” Eddie demands. “Richie—”

Richie tosses a frantic glance over his shoulder. “I can’t stay here for long,” he says. “Connection gets more fucked the farther from Derry you are, I’m trying to get the rest but it’s tough, but I couldn’t—Eddie, do you know what happens when people die? They turn into ghosts. Turns out that’s the same for clown monsters from outer space.” He clambers closer to Eddie, getting into his space, and says desperately, “It’s dead but It _left a ghost_, and it’s trying to come back, you have to help me, Eddie, you have to—”

**_what do you think you’re doing, richie,_** comes that horrible, awful, familiar voice from the shadows at Richie’s back. Eddie freezes up, his blood turning to ice in his veins, and Richie makes a horrible whimpering sound. **_come play with the clown, richie! i’m so lonely down here, and you never play with me anymore, you only want to play with that sick little freak and his rotten friends—_**

Richie pushes Eddie back, shielding him. “Eds,” he says, and this close Eddie can see flecks of sickly yellow in his eyes, “help, _help me_—”

Children’s hands, skeletal and decaying, burnt and broken-fingered, bloody and bruised, shoot out from the darkness, pulling Richie away. “_Eddie_!” he screams, reaching, and Eddie moves just a beat too slow, fingers just barely managing to brush against Richie’s before he disappears into the darkness.

Eddie wakes up, then, a scream trapped in his throat, sweaty and shaking. He reaches for his phone and dials Bev’s number.

“Hey, Eddie,” says Bev when she picks up, her voice light. In the background, Eddie can hear a dog barking, Ben laughing and calling _go fetch_. “Something up?”

“How did you know?” he asks.

“What?” Bev asks.

“That your dreams weren’t just dreams,” says Eddie, thinking about Richie, cold lips pressing against his forehead. His body had been cool against Eddie’s, and he’d been missing a heartbeat, but it had felt so _real_.

Bev doesn’t say anything, for a long moment. Over the phone, he hears the click of a lighter. “I don’t know how to explain it,” she says, at last. “Tell me what you dreamed.”

“Richie,” he says. “I dreamed about Richie.” And then he tells her about the dream that started all this, about this new one he’s just woken up from. “And then I called you,” he finishes, “because out of all of us you’re the one with the most experience in—in weird prophetic dreams. Is this one?”

“When Richie shows up in your dreams, what does he usually look like?”

“Uh, himself?”

There’s a breath on the other end of the line, like Bev’s steeling herself. “What did he look like in these dreams?” she asks.

Eddie’s about to say _himself_ when he thinks—_not quite._ Richie had been scared in all his dreams, trying desperately to reach him before It pulled him back, but it had only been this dream where he’d gotten a good look at him, gotten a good feel.

“He’d been cold,” says Eddie, slowly. “Like he was dead a while, just hadn’t decomposed. He had a gaping hole in his chest, and his glasses were cracked. And—Bev, I think his eyes had these little gold flecks in them.” _Like Its,_ he remembers, suddenly, his brain calling up the memory of It looming over him, biting at his fingers, its eyes golden.

“And he said,” says Bev, softly, “that It left a ghost?”

“Uh, yeah,” says Eddie.

“Ghosts can possess people.”

“Oh,” says Eddie. “Fuck. Wait, does that mean I’ve been—”

“I don’t know,” says Bev. “I don’t think It’s trying to contact you. I think it’s _Richie_,” and her voice trips over his name, “and I think he’s telling the truth when he says he needs help. But I’m only guessing, I don’t know for sure.”

“But we have to tell the rest,” says Eddie.

“Yeah,” says Bev. “Ben and I can fly to England and pick Bill up, then we can get to New York this weekend. Mike and Stan?”

“I was already meeting with them anyway,” says Eddie, running a hand through his hair. “For drinks. I can just drop the bad news on them before the weekend.”

“If anything changes,” says Bev, “let me know?”

“I will,” Eddie promises. “See you this weekend, Bev.”

“See you,” Bev echoes, and ends the call. Eddie puts it off to the side and lies back in bed, looking up at the ceiling.

“Rich,” he says, softly, “are you okay?”

No answer. Not even a mocking laugh. The farther away they are from Derry, the harder it is to communicate with Richie. He can only hope Richie will try again, next dream he has. He can only hope there’s enough of Richie left to try again.

\--

Stan takes it well when Eddie calls him to tell him. Well, compared to the last time anyway, when he’d very nearly tried to _kill himself_. This time he treats Eddie’s ears to some creative Yiddish cursing, instead, before saying, “Right, we’ll just make our hang-out a Losers’ Club reunion this weekend, huh?”

“Yep,” says Eddie, massaging his temples. His sleep is well and truly shot now, so he’s just making himself a cup of coffee while waiting for the New York sky to grow lighter and making calls. Then he adds, “Do you—Do you feel like, uh, taking a bath right now?”

“I appreciate that you’re trying to be tactful about it, at least,” says Stan, dryly. “No, I’m not planning to. I mean, it’s _Richie_. He’s the least scary person I know. And if he warned you, that means he’s still in there.”

Mike, when Eddie calls him, says as much too. “Should’ve figured It had a final trick up its sleeve,” he says, “but that Richie warned you—that’s good. It means he’s still Richie, at least partly.”

“_Partly?_” says Eddie, the word coming out harsher than he means to. “Shit. Sorry. What do you mean _partly_?”

“I mean that It is possessing him right now,” says Mike. “Because we killed Its body, and it found a new one.”

“In Richie’s body,” says Eddie, softly, the horror of it sinking in. Morbidly he wonders how Richie must’ve felt, waking up in the dark, dank pit of the cistern only to realize that something else, something dark and evil and _other_, was inside his body too.

Mike says, quietly, voice cracking, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” says Eddie, knowing instantly what he means. Mike and Ben, who had a _broken rib_, had to pull him away from Richie, had to tell him they couldn’t afford to lose any more time, the house was coming down around them, he had to leave the body, _that’s not Richie anymore, Eddie, we have to go_. “God, no, _don’t be_, okay? We couldn’t do anything, Stan needed our help more.” Stan had passed out from blood loss on the sidewalk as the house collapsed, and the rest of the Losers were injured, and exhausted, and heartbroken. Later the injuries would mysteriously heal while in the hospital, and Eddie had thought that the last of the magic It had left over.

“Yeah, but—”

“No,” says Eddie, firmly. “Mike. We are going to get Richie back from It. Somehow. And we need you to not blame yourself for not knowing this was going to happen—we killed It! We killed the shit out of it so well it’s a _ghost_ possessing someone _fighting it_, it’s that desperate.” It’s admirable how much he believes it, really, considering—well, when he thinks about it. It’s really Eddie’s own fault. If he hadn’t turned his back on It then maybe Richie wouldn’t be in this mess. Maybe all seven of them would’ve gotten out of the house on Neibolt Street. “We’ll get him back,” he says, optimistically.

“We’ll get him back,” Mike echoes, sounding more sure of himself now. “Yeah. And then we’re gonna bust up a clown ghost.”

“Who you gonna call,” says Eddie, wryly.

“Losers’ Club,” says Mike, his voice a little off-key.

After that, the sky has grown light, so Eddie pulls on his running shoes and goes for a run.

\--

Richie thinks he must be going mad, down in the dark.

Anyone would be, he supposes, if they were dead and then suddenly possessed by a demon alien clown. Things leave ghosts, and It is the type of ghost that does not want to go peacefully into the light. Richie’s a ghost, and weeks (months, years, time is strange in the dark) have passed and he wants to _go_, wants to get out. Wants to go into the light, or at least haunt anywhere else but Derry’s sewers.

But It is in him, moving under his skin, turning him into something less than human. (**_more than,_** he thinks sometimes, and pukes at the thought.) It brought him back because it needed a new body, and since then Richie’s been down here, in the sewers, in the dark, talking to himself. How long has he been here? Ten months? Ten years? He doesn’t know anymore. It’s a jealous thing, won’t let him take a step out into the sunshine no matter how much he shouts or curses or even begs.

**_stay with me,_** It says in the back of his mind now, as he peeks out of the storm drain. **_i’m always here for you richie. not like your friends. they left you down here, all alone, but i saw you. i’ve always seen you._**

“Fucking shut up, creep,” Richie mutters, scratching the back of his head with more force than strictly necessary. “I gotta get out of here, I’m—”

**_hungry? starving? you’re a growing boy, you need food._** He smells ham, all of a sudden, the fragrant sizzle of it cooking slowly in the pan invading his nostrils. God, he _wants_ it, so badly, his stomach rumbling with hunger. **_how about that one?_** It continues, swinging Richie’s head around to show him the chubby young girl descending from her bike.

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?!” Richie snaps, clapping a hand over his own mouth and stepping backward to the sound of Its tittering laughter trying to escape from him. “Fuck, no, shut the fuck up, you stupid hell-clown, I’m not eating anyone!”

**_just a little taste of her fear,_** It croons, and flashes something in his mind: a fly buzzing about, landing on a man, changing him from man to something else. Who the fuck let this kid watch such a weird movie, Richie wonders, and feels sick at the thought. How does he know she’s scared of that? **_it’ll taste so good richie and don’t you want company? don’t you want a friend? she can float with you!_**

“I’m forty,” says Richie, trying not to hurl on his own feet, “if I wanted company I’d go on Grindr, I wouldn’t talk to some _kid_, you dumb fucker.” He shuts his eyes against the blinding pain, against It trying to—to force fly wings out of his back, turn his eyes into bulging fragmented fly eyes. “_No_,” he says, and with a monumental amount of effort, takes one step back from the grate. Then two. “No one’s floating. Not her, nobody else.”

** _what about eddie?_ **

“You lay a fucking hand on Eddie Kaspbrak,” Richie snarls, “and I swear to god I’ll rip my own heart out.”

**_you can’t keep him safe forever, not from me, not from you,_** It says, singsong. **_he doesn’t want you anyway, he left you down here, with me. you told him you loved him and he left you, threw you away like so much trash._**

_They had to drag me away,_ Eddie had said, and he’d hugged Richie first, hadn’t cared about the gaping hole in his chest or the dirt on his pants. He’d been grieving Richie. _We all miss you._

“Fuck you, clown,” says Richie, holding on to that memory. He is missed, he is loved. Hopefully, the Losers will be coming, and if there’s anyone Richie can trust to defeat It again, it’s them. He scrubs a hand over his face, then frowns. Shit. Teeth. He concentrates, digging up the last time he saw himself in a mirror, back when he was still alive, and turns the sharpened, knife-like rows of teeth into his mouth into something more human.

He turns away from the sewer grate, and starts walking back to the cistern.

There’s something he needs to find.

\--

As per usual for the Losers, the second they get back together, they commandeer an entire table and descend into chaos.

“Guillermo _fucking_ del Toro, seriously?” Eddie asks Bill, shoving lightly at his side. “You fucking bastard, you could’ve just said something in the group chat! Congrats, man!”

“Thanks,” says Bill, laughing. “Audra’s been smug for weeks since he got attached to the project, we’re planning to meet with him and the casting director in December. I wanna make sure they get the casting right, y’know?” He casts a look around at the six of them, his smile falling a little when his eyes land on Richie’s empty chair. “But del Toro’s damn good, I don’t doubt he’ll make something good out of _Homecoming Queen_.”

“Honestly, that was one of my least favorite books,” says Bev. She holds her hands up as Bill tosses a bit of rice her way, and says, with a laugh, “You’ve met women, Bill! You’ve talked to women!”

“I know, I know,” says Bill. “I was young, I was just starting out, it was my first real book.”

“Still, Guillermo del _Toro_,” says Mike. “That’s a good pick. I loved his Hellboy movies, they were fun.”

“I got around to watching _Crimson Peak_ last week with Patty, it was terrifying as fuck,” says Stan. “Fun, though.”

“I watched _Pan’s Labyrinth_ when it came out,” Ben says. “It was some affecting stuff. You’re in good hands, Bill.”

“Hey, also, Bev, Audra loves the dress you sent her,” Bill adds, propping his chin up on her hand. “She’s planning to wear it to her next red carpet, what do you want her to say when people ask her who she’s wearing?”

“A Beverly Marsh original,” says Bev, a corner of her mouth quirking upwards.

Seven glasses and several bottles of liquor come around. Eddie pours Richie’s glass to half-full, and places it in front of the empty chair. Like Richie’s going to come here, grinning brightly, bitching about traffic and being late to the party. Like Richie isn’t trapped in Derry, possessed by It.

“So,” says Bill. “Eddie—has Richie tried to talk to you again?”

“A couple of times,” says Eddie. “Usually doesn’t last long, though. He says the connection’s fucked, because I’m so far from Derry.” He takes a sip of his own beer. “Has he tried to talk to you guys?”

“Yeah,” says Bev. “On the flight here, I dreamed of him, in the apartment my dad and I used to share. He looked like what you described, Eddie.” She tucks her hair behind her ear, and says, “He was—cold to the touch. And scared, so scared. He was begging for help. He said that It left a ghost behind, that it was trying to come back using him.” Her fingers tap against the glass, and she says, “He said he didn’t blame us. He just wanted us to be okay. He mentioned he trusted us to defeat It again, if we had to. I think he was going to say more, but then blood started _gushing_ from the faucet, and It…_took_ him. It all went by so fast, I couldn’t grab him.”

_He was screaming when It pulled him back,_ she doesn’t say.

“So he isn’t far gone yet, if he’s trying to warn us,” says Mike.

“How many times are we going to have to kill this fucking clown?” Stan mutters, massaging his temples. “Anyone else dreamed of Richie, besides Eddie and Bev? Because I’ve been having some strange dreams, too. Just—not as clear as Eddie and Bev’s are.”

“I think he tried with me,” says Bill. “But it’s like Beverly and Eddie said, the farther you are from Derry, the shittier the connection is.”

“So one of us,” says Ben, quietly, “might have to go back to Derry.”

Mike lets out a breath, and says, “I could—”

“No,” says Bill. “No, Mike, you’ve done _enough_. You don’t have to go back to Derry.”

“Who else will?” Mike asks, and he doesn’t even sound or look pissed, just—sad and resigned. “Someone’s got to keep an eye on things. On Richie. I can just move into the barn, do my research there.”

“Actually,” says Eddie, staring at the empty chair, at the half-full glass. Richie had reached for him, first. Had stretched a hand out to him as It dragged him into the sewers, into the dark, screaming, pleading, _help me, Eddie, please, you have to help me_. “I could go back.” He looks up now to see shocked faces all around, and smiles tightly. “I’m unemployed and divorced,” he says. “I can find a job in Derry, find a cheap place to stay in for the time being. Or Mike’s barn, if he’s fine with me deep-cleaning the place.”

“Okay, no,” starts Mike.

“You have something good out here, Mike,” says Eddie. “You have—You’ve got a road trip, you’re away from Derry, the rest of you all have _lives_. Me?” He shrugs. “Almost everyone who’s going to miss me is in this room, at this table, and I’d be going to the one who’s not here.”

“You don’t have to go,” says Stan.

“Yeah, I do,” says Eddie. “I’m the first person he reached out to.” Richie had scrabbled against the pavement, trying to get to him. “I’d have to tell my lawyers I’m moving to Derry, and any meetings they and Myra’s lawyers need to have with me are going to have to be done via Skype, but—I can go.” He smiles at his friends, at his family, these people he loves so much, and knows—to spare them from Derry, from It, he’ll do anything. To save Richie, he’ll do anything. “I’ll keep in touch,” he says. “Keep you guys updated.”

“Eddie,” says Ben, “if you want, if you’re hell-bent on this—I can see if there’s a place in Derry. Make sure you have a bed, a roof, some place to sleep in that you don’t have to pay for.” He smiles, tiredly, and says, “I’ll make sure you don’t have to deep-clean too much.”

“I can call Ms. Jamison at the library,” says Mike, “see if she’s willing to let you take a job there. Or at least let you in after hours for research.”

And just like that, they’ve started making plans to help Eddie pack up his life and move to Derry, to find some way they can save Richie. Bev mentions checking out other libraries, _maybe there’s a method there we can use_, and Mike pulls out his road trip itinerary and starts adding occult libraries into the mix. Bill offers to loan Eddie some money if he needs it, Ben’s already googling properties in Derry and asking for Eddie’s approval. Stan buys Eddie more drinks, in the accurate opinion that Eddie is going to need a lot of drinks.

_We’re gonna get you back, Rich,_ Eddie thinks, desperately, trying to push the thought out of his head and all the way to Derry somehow. The empty chair is not going to be empty for a minute longer than absolutely necessary, not on Eddie’s watch. _We’ll save you. Just hang in there. We’re getting you back._

_We’re getting you back._


	2. under pressure precious things can break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Gabrielle Aplin's "Please Don't Say You Love Me".
> 
> **content warnings:** canon-typical horror. some talk from Richie that can be taken as suicidal ideation, although Eddie argues against it. allusions to past emotional abuse and internalized homophobia.

“I’m going back to Derry,” he tells Richie, the next time he dreams of him. They’re sitting on the sidewalk outside of the Jade of the Orient, and every so often Richie looks back at the entrance nervously. There’s new scars on him, Eddie realizes, like fighting off It is taking a toll on him. “You don’t have to be alone anymore.”

“What the _fuck,_” says Richie. “Why would you go back to Derry? Mike’s right there! He knows this place better than you do!”

“I know you, though,” says Eddie. “And Mike—well, I mean, he shouldn’t have to go back to Derry, not after waiting so long to get out of it.” He shrugs, and leans back on his palms, trying to ignore the voice in his head screaming about diseases he can pick up touching the sidewalk like this. This is a dream. He’s not gonna get anything. “I figured, well, between all the Losers, I’m the one no one will miss.”

“Not even your wife?” Richie asks, and. Right. Nobody’s told him yet. He’d died before Eddie divorced Myra, of course he wouldn’t know.

“My ex-wife,” Eddie corrects, and Richie’s eyes go wide in response.

“Wow,” says Richie. “Fuck. So you married _and_ divorced your mom?”

“I can’t fucking believe I’m going back to Derry so you can make worse jokes than this, dickbag,” Eddie mutters, scrubbing a hand over his face. “And no, asshole, I divorced my wife so I could get with _your_ mom.”

Richie laughs, then, the sound of it startling out of him. Like he hasn’t laughed like this in a while, easy and carefree. A knot in Eddie’s gut loosens, as Richie’s laughter tapers off into faint snickers. “Fuck,” says Richie, “Eddie Kaspbrak gets off a _good_ one, Jesus.” He sobers up, then, and scratches absently at his wrists, where—fuck, where white makeup is beginning to spread, like a rash across Richie’s skin. “I can’t stay long,” he says, “not without—I have to give you something so I _can_. So you’ll be safe.”

“How do you know that?” Eddie asks.

“I don’t fucking know, I’m new to all this magic shit,” says Richie. He throws another nervous glance back at the Jade. The lights inside are starting to flicker, in and out. “Fuck. Eds, tell everyone I miss them, okay? Tell them I love them, I don’t regret anything with them other than the time I punched Bill in the face.”

“Rich,” says Eddie, taking hold of his hand.

Richie freezes in place, then relaxes, slowly. Behind them, the Jade’s lights flicker once more before going still. “Okay,” he says. “Here. Got you something. Don’t know if it’ll work, but if you believe it does, it will.” He pulls away to rummage around in his jacket, and the lights flicker again, before finally going dark.

The doors start to rattle, as if something is pushing at them from the inside.

“Shit,” says Eddie, and, unthinkingly, grabs on to Richie’s arm just as the doors burst open, the leper crawling out at top speed to seize Richie by the ankle. “Shit! Rich! _Richie!_”

“_Eddie!_” Richie screams, as It pulls him away, Eddie’s grip slipping even as he tries his hardest to hold on to Richie. “No, no, _no_—”

It yanks hard, once more. With a final anguished cry, Richie’s hand slips out of Eddie’s, and Richie is pulled, screaming, into the Jade.

Eddie runs after him, but the doors slam shut. **_don’t you know how the movie goes by now, eddie,_** It taunts, from the Jade, from the sewers, from everywhere. **_don’t you know a boy who likes boys is a dead boy? a sick boy? oh, eddie-bear, you’re sick! you’re going to die soon!_**

“Rich!” Eddie shouts, slamming his fists against the door. “Richie!”

**_he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts,_** It sings, mockingly.

Eddie grits his teeth. “Richie, I’m coming to get you back,” he says. Already he can feel the pull of the waking world, the dream beginning to loosen its grip on him. “We’re coming. We’re going to save you. We’re gonna exorcise this fucking clown and we are going to _save you_, Richie Tozier, I believe that. I believe that. Richie, you know I—”

\--

When Eddie wakes up, there’s a half-melted arcade token in his hand. From the Capitol Theatre, he realizes, suddenly—the arcade where Richie used to play Street Fighter with him all the time.

He looks down at it, then holds it up. Richie had given it to him before he’d been dragged off. Had said it would make sure he could stay, without fear of being dragged away.

Eddie believes that. Believes him.

He digs around his suitcases for his wallet, then looks down at the token. _It has to be on me,_ he thinks, and grabs his phone to start googling arts and crafts stores in New York. He’s got some time until he moves to Derry. He can afford a little project.

\--

The arcade token is hanging on a leather cord around his neck when Eddie pulls back into the parking lot of the Derry Townhouse. Ben and Mike help him haul all his things out of the car, and Ben says, “Can’t believe we’re back here again. This place was a little too easy to actually buy.”

“Like the owner was trying to get rid of it fast,” says Mike, looking troubled as he hoists one of Eddie’s duffel bags up onto his shoulders. “Eddie, you’re sure about this?”

“Of course I’m sure,” says Eddie, pulling along two of his suitcases. “They’ve probably even cleaned up the blood by now, I bet.” He hopes so, anyway, or else he’s gonna be very pissed off about the previous management’s priorities. “Come on. You guys are probably itching to get back to more important stuff.” _Itching to get out of Derry, home of the sewer clown from your worst nightmares._

“This is important,” says Ben. “It’s Richie.”

Eddie can’t really argue with that. Instead, he just pushes the doors to the townhouse open, and whistles lowly. “They did not change anything at _all_,” he says. “But they restocked the bar!”

“Oughta get someone now who’ll do that,” says Ben to himself, as Mike heads upstairs to check on the rooms. To Eddie, he says, “Bev and I will be coming back around here in a couple of weeks to check up on things, that okay with you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Eddie mutters, already eyeing all the places that could definitely use a ton of cleaning. Still, for the moment, it’s serviceable for their needs. “How are you and Bev, anyway?”

Ben blushes, then ducks his head. “Good,” he says. “We got a dog.”

“Did you get it checked out?” Eddie asks.

“Of course,” says Ben. “Missy’s fine. That’s her name, Missy—she came with it attached already, so we figured we’d keep it.” He smiles, all smitten and happy. God. Eddie’s glad for him and Bev, he really is, they both deserve good things like a life together and a dog and maybe even kids someday, but something in his heart twists too. “We’re housebreaking her right now.”

“Nothing up here,” calls Mike from upstairs. “They cleaned up the crime scene, so you don’t have to worry about that, at least.”

“Thank fucking god,” Eddie mutters, and climbs up the stairs to see Mike peeking into the other rooms and giving a thumbs-up. “So what’s the verdict? Anything creepy I should know about? Anything I could be allergic to in there?”

“Unless you really do have dust allergies, then no, I don’t think so,” says Mike. “It’s a bit dusty in some of the rooms, but otherwise it’s all in order.” He walks over to clap Eddie on the back, and says, “If anything happens at all, or if you find something in the library when Ms. Jamison lets you in, you’ve got my number.”

“I got it, I got it,” says Eddie. “Just help me haul my shit to my room, and maybe we can explore the rest of this townhouse, see if there’s any way we can talk to Richie here.” They hadn’t done a whole lot of exploring here, the first time around, too busy trying not to die to Its tricks. Now they’ve got time, and they need to contact Richie somehow. Somehow.

So they go exploring. Ben and Mike head down to go see if the basement’s viable for communication with the dead, and Eddie looks in every bathroom, checking for—for what, he’s not sure. Undead Bowers? Richie? His mom? Fuck. He should be down with Ben and Mike.

He opens the door to his bathroom, and blinks at the letters written in red on his bathroom.

_HI SPAGHETTI MAN,_ it reads.

For a moment his heart jumps into his throat, _oh god is that blood oh god are we too late_, before he realizes—the letters aren’t dripping. When he steps closer, he can see they’re made from lipstick.

“Stop giving me a fucking heart attack, asshole,” he says, resting his hands on the sink and breathing out slow. “Richie? Can you hear me down there? I don’t—I don’t know how this works, but if you’re here, I got your token. I’m wearing it right now. Also, I really hope you didn’t steal this lipstick from some poor kid. That’s kinda unsanitary.”

“I live in a fucking sewer, genius,” comes Richie’s voice from the sink, and Eddie’s breath catches in his throat. He’s missed him. He’s _missed_ him, so much. “No, I, um. Got it from the last guests. They left their shit behind. Free fuckin’ shit for me.”

“Did you scare them all off or something?” Eddie asks. “Management included? If so, how the fuck did you do that?”

“I didn’t mean to,” says Richie. “I just walked in and they flipped. I didn’t realize until—hey, did you know, when someone with a fucking hole in their chest and more teeth than a shark walks into a hotel and asks for a room, people freak the fuck out?”

“What the _fuck_,” says Eddie, stunned.

“I didn’t even know!” Richie says, and Eddie imagines him throwing his hands up in the air, helplessly annoyed. “I just wanted to make sure you got a room, but It really wanted to scare the shit out of people, I guess.” There’s a dark laugh from the drain, and Richie says, “Don’t get possessed by a clown monster, Eds, it’s just not worth the cool shit you can do.”

“There’s nothing cool about living in a sewer and being possessed by the thing that tried to eat you,” says Eddie.

“Exactly,” says Richie. “God, though—it’s. It’s good. That you’re here. I’m not happy with it, ‘cause Derry’s a fucking shithole even at the best of times, but I’m—glad you’re here, Eds.”

“I’m glad you’re not completely dead, Rich,” says Eddie. “Just—hang in there, we’re going to save you.”

“What?” Richie asks, baffled.

“You said you wanted us to help,” Eddie reminds him.

“Yeah, in exorcising the goddamn demon clown!” says Richie. “But I’m fucking _dead_, man. There’s no way you can help me get out of that. I’m—I don’t know how this works, I don’t know how any of this magic shit It’s so good at works, but I know for a fucking fact that right now the clown ghost is keeping me alive because _I’m Its new body_. You kill that, you kill me, and It’s done, Eddie, It’s gone for good.”

“I’m not going to fucking _kill you_,” snaps Eddie.

“You might not have a choice!” Richie yells back, and Eddie actually feels the air blow out of the drain. He backs up before anything can come spurting out of the sink, but nothing seems to be trying to bubble up or anything. “I’m—fuck, I’m sorry, but I’ve had time to think about it, it might be the only way.”

“Fuck that,” says Eddie, bluntly. “_Fuck that._ I uprooted my entire fucking life in New York to come here and get you out. We’re going to find a way to get you out of the sewers without killing you, Rich, that’s unacceptable.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No _buts_,” Eddie says. “We’re getting you back, and It can eat shit.” He pauses, and adds, “Tell It that too. If it’s possessing you then it should know, we’re gonna kick its ass.”

“I forgot how fucking stubborn you are when you wanna be,” says Richie, sounding all choked up. “God, Eds, I—It could hurt you. _I_ could hurt you. You’re sure about this? You’re sure you want to try to save me? After what I told you back in the cistern, after I fucking dragged you all the way back here to ask you to pretty please kill me?”

_Richie, nobody’s ever told me they loved me like this without expecting anything of me before._ He doesn’t say that, but—Richie had never asked him to say it back. Richie loved him without expecting it back, without suffocating Eddie in love. Richie had rolled him over and _died_ in his place, and he could’ve asked Eddie to lie to him and say he loved him back but he didn’t, he didn’t. All he did was tell him: _I love you, god, I loved you so much._

It’s funny, really. The one time Eddie wants to say it back, and he can’t. The words stick in his throat like phlegm, and he swallows them back down. _I love you,_ he thinks, hopelessly, helplessly. _I love you so much._ “Yes, you asshole, I’m sure,” he says. “We’ll save you. You’re not dying to the clown again, Rich. You’ve died one too many times because of It already.”

“Yeah, 0/10, don’t recommend,” Richie says. Then his voice takes on an odd, almost malicious, _un-Richie_ tone, and he says, “**but then _again i wouldn’t be in this mess if you didn’t—_fuck. No**. No, _no._” There’s the sound of a thud, like Richie’s kicked something. “Shit,” says Richie, “shit, _shit_, Eddie, I gotta go. I have to go.”

“Wait, Richie—”

“I need to go or It’s going to fuck with both of us,” says Richie, sounding desperate now. “I’m sorry. I’m _sorry_. Eddie—I have to go, I’ll see you later.” And Eddie jumps back as grey water bursts forth from the drain, all over the mirror, wiping away the lipstick letters.

He can hear children from below, giggling. _You’ll float too,_ they sing in the back of his mind, and he swallows the bile that rises in the back of his throat.

“Fuck,” says Eddie, staring at the mirror dripping with grey water. He races out of the bathroom, out of the bedroom, and back down to the lobby. “Guys! _Guys!_ Ben, Mike, where are you?” He pauses, then frowns. “Did they already leave?” he mutters to himself. It would be out of character for them, but then anyone would get spooked being in Derry for any longer than a few minutes. Begs the question of why Eddie’s willingly staying here, instead.

Then he hears Ben call, “Rich? Richie! _Richie!_” below his feet.

\--

By the time Eddie makes it to the basement, Richie’s already gone. Hasn’t even left a trace, although Ben and Mike look plenty surprised, their flashlights trained on a spot where Richie must’ve appeared, leading off to a drain that leads to the sewers.

“Fuck,” says Ben, “he was—he was _right here_—”

“Guys,” says Eddie, panting, “guys, I talked to him. I talked to him, he’s—well, he isn’t _okay,_ I’m honestly worried—”

Mike jerks a thumb towards the pipes and says, “We saw him too. Just turned around and there he was.” He chews his lip. “He looked like himself—mostly. But there were splotches of white paint on his skin, and he looked terrified when we tried to talk to him.”

Ben lets out a breath, his brow furrowing as he glances back over at the pipes. “I stepped closer and he _ran_. I think he’s scared of us.”

“No,” says Eddie, thinking of Richie’s voice, the desperation soaking through every word. “No, he’s scared _for_ us.” And he tells them about the bathroom: the lipstick, the conversation, what Richie was asking, the change in his voice when It had briefly taken him over. “He doesn’t want to hurt us,” he concludes. “He’d have died first before hurting any of us. That’s why he ran, I think. When he felt It starting to break through, he ran so It couldn’t use him to get to us.”

“He always was protective,” says Ben, quietly. “Stands to reason he’d want to protect us from himself.” He huffs out a breath, and says, “But Losers stick together. That way we win.”

“I’ve been doing some research, actually,” says Mike. “Mostly occult research, but I checked a few sites about kidnapping survivors—”

“Kidnapping?” Eddie asks.

“Closest thing I could find to ‘demonic possession by sewer clown’,” says Mike, turning his flashlight off and tucking it into his bag. “Richie’s situation shares a lot of things in common with a lot of kidnapping cases, actually. He’s being kept in isolation by an entity with perceived power over him, against his will, in a confined, cramped space. If he’s been trapped here as long as he’s been dead, It’s had time to subtly influence his way of thinking.”

Eddie snorts out a laugh, hearing it echo through the basement. “Richie wouldn’t think like It,” he says. “He ran when he felt it breaking through.”

“Exactly,” says Mike. “It’s influencing him by convincing him it’s better _for us_ if he’s isolated. Safer, because he’s dangerous.”

“He’s the least dangerous person I know,” says Eddie, incredulously.

“He was,” says Mike.

“Was?” asks Ben. “It’s _Richie_.”

“Yeah,” says Mike. “The more isolated he is, though, the stronger It will be. And then he _will_ be dangerous.”

They follow Mike back up the stairs, back up to the lobby. Eddie pauses on the last step up, and looks back to the sewers, trying to catch a glimpse of Richie.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says.

He swears he can hear a soft sigh, somewhere in the pipes.

\--

When Eddie falls asleep, the first night in the townhouse, the arcade token is warm against his skin, next to his heart.

He opens his eyes on a sunny beach with no sewer in sight and only the scent of the sea, and curses at the grit of sand under his toes. He didn’t bring beach clothes for this dream, fuck, shit, _fuck_. When he turns, he sees Richie, looking around in wonder, more himself now than he’d been before: no gaping hole in his chest, no splotches of white on his skin, no golden flecks in his eyes. Just Richie, the way he looked at the Jade, the way he looked before they walked into the house on Neibolt Street.

“Eddie!” Richie says. “Holy shit, it worked!”

“_Richie_,” says Eddie, his voice a wrecked thing, and he charges forward to pull Richie into a hug. “Fuck, you okay?”

“You moved to Derry of your own free fucking will to save my dead ass and you’re asking _me_ if I’m okay?” Richie asks, but his arms wrap around Eddie anyway to hug him back.

“Between the two of us, I’m not the one possessed by a demon clown,” Eddie shoots back. He pulls away then, really looks Richie over, and smacks him on the chest. “You dick,” he says, “don’t ever fucking die on me again.”

“I can’t promise that, Eds,” says Richie. “I can’t promise anything, but that at least we’re not gonna be interrupted by Pennywise here.” He waves a hand at the sunshine, the tide lapping at their bare toes, the baby turtles making their way towards the ocean with no fear of predators. It’s peaceful, here, in a way Eddie’s never really known. “Fuck. Look at _you_, so fucking cute as always.”

“Fuck off,” says Eddie, with no real heat behind it, making only a token effort to pull away as Richie pinches his cheek and chants _cute cute cute_, like when they were kids. “We’re forty, we stopped qualifying for cute at least twenty years ago.”

“Aw, bay-bee, you’ll always be cute to me,” says Richie. “C’mon, sit down, I promise you’re not gonna get dream germs or dream bugs off the sand here.”

“Why the fuck would either of us dream germs?” Eddie asks, but he sits down anyway, next to Richie. The tide comes in and washes over their bare feet, leaving behind seashells and pulling in the turtles. “So. The cistern.”

“Oh, fuck,” says Richie.

“You said you loved me,” says Eddie.

Richie flops back onto the sand, his hands serving as a pillow for his neck. “Can we not talk about that?” he asks. “Can we talk about literally anything else other than me spilling my feelings all over myself like a kid? I thought I was going to _die_. I actually did die.”

“Yeah, well, tough luck, we’re talking about it,” says Eddie. “You kicked off my mid-life crisis, dickwad, the least you can do is talk it out with me.” He leans back as well, but only rests his palms on the sand and tries not to panic over the kinds of diseases it must have. It’s a dream. He’s not going to pick anything up from it.

“What, really?” Richie asks. “I’m honored. All I had to do was confess my undying love and then die immediately after.”

“Fuck you for that last part,” says Eddie. “I missed you. Everyone missed you. Stan _cried_. And you—you spent your last words on telling me you loved me. Of _course_ I had a crisis after that, because—” He stops. Lets out a breath. Says, “Did you want me to say it back?”

“God, that would’ve been nice,” says Richie, “but no. No, I never thought you would, I never expected you to say it back. I just—I didn’t want to die without you knowing I loved you.”

“Past or present?” Eddie asks.

Richie is quiet, looking away into the surf. He takes his glasses off, absently rubs over the lenses with the fabric of his shirt. “I wish it was past,” he says, quietly. “I’ve never not—even when I forgot you. Even when I tried to forget I was even—I’ve never _not_.”

Eddie thinks of his mother, of the pills she said he needed, the poison of her love seeping into his system. Of Myra, screaming, _I’m the only one who knows how to take care of you, say you love me, say it back,_ unable to deal with her grief for the loss of her marriage and unable to understand _his_ grief for the loss of his best friend.

Of Richie, and the relief in his face when he rolled Eddie over, the resignation in his eyes when he confessed. He never asked Eddie to say it back. He’d only ever told Eddie he was braver than he thought. He only ever asked Eddie to look at him, to be his friend.

Eddie’s never been loved, like that. Like it’s enough to just be there, to just be friends. Like even if he doesn’t say _I love you_ back it’ll be fine, anyway, because it’s already a given he loves them back, in any way he can.

He loves Richie back, the same way Richie loves him.

The only problem is, even here, the words are trapped in his throat, like flies in amber. He’s used to saying them on command, like a doll that speaks when you squeeze its hand, but on his own they dry up, on his own they’re stuck, and he could never ask Richie to tell him to say it right back. He half-thinks Richie wouldn’t even believe it, that way, and he _needs_ him to believe it. But here they can touch, so he gently, hesitantly, takes hold of Richie’s hand and squeezes.

It’s warm, here. He can feel a pulse, here.

“You’re not alone, you know,” he says, instead of everything else he wants to say, instead of _I love you_. “I, um. I tried not to look at it too much, after Derry, but I think I was—and marrying Myra was just—”

He falters. After a lifetime of keeping it secret, how do you say it? _Just fucking say it, asshole._

“I was lying to myself when I proposed to her,” he says, at last.

Richie squeezes back, and bumps his shoulder. “At least you divorced her now,” he says, his hand holding on tight to Eddie. “You can fuck any guy you want now, and I hear there’s this thing called Grindr you can use if you wanna fuck someone in the area.”

“Fuck you,” huffs Eddie, feeling lighter for Richie’s jokes. “I’m in the middle of a sexuality crisis, I’m not going out to fuck a random guy in _Derry_.”

“God, no, all the hot people already moved out of Derry,” says Richie.

“Maybe I don’t want to fuck a stranger,” Eddie says. “Maybe I just—” He stops, looking right at Richie. _I want you. I want you._ “Maybe I don’t feel like fucking someone while we’re trying to get you back from the dead, how about that?” he says. “I’m gonna be busy trying to make sure It doesn’t try to eat people with your trashmouth, it’s already dirty enough.”

Richie doesn’t say anything to that, but his expression shutters, and he looks away.

“Rich?” Eddie asks. “Hey. Hey, dude, come on, look at me. What’s up?”

“I didn’t eat anyone,” says Richie, “but—when I walked into the townhouse and scared the _shit_ out of people? I didn’t do it on purpose, I think that was more It than me, but I could.” He gulps, then slips his hand out of Eddie’s to push himself up to a sitting position, pull his knees up to his chest. “I could _taste_ them,” he says, “I could taste the fear and I swear to god, Eds, it tasted—it felt like—I was so fucking _hungry_, and it was just a, a _taste_, not quite enough, and I wanted—I wanted more.” He digs his fingers into his scalp and says, “I didn’t let myself, I’ve got a fucking body count already and like fuck am I adding anybody else to it, but—It’s hungry. And _I’m_ hungry.”

Eddie drums his fingers on his knees. “I get scared easy,” he says. “You could—You could turn into the leper and scare the shit out of me. Would that tide you over?”

“Hah,” says Richie, “no.” He scrubs his hand over his face and shakes his head. “That’s not happening. I’m not scaring you just to stave off the hunger, this isn’t like a fucking vampire thing where you can bleed a little into my mouth and it’ll be fine. It _wants to eat you_.”

“If It tries to eat me using you as a vessel I’ll chase it off,” says Eddie, with a shrug. “I mean, honestly, it was just a dumb fucking clown in life, now it’s an even worse clown as a ghost, what with the whole possessing a shitty comedian thing.”

“Ouch, going for the jugular, aren’tcha?” Richie says, putting a hand over his heart, failing to stop a smile. “Eddie Kaspbrak getting off a good one, _yow_za—”

“Shut up, Rich,” says Eddie, smacking his shoulder and taking his hand again, squeezing once, twice, three times. “I want to help you. I want to help tide you over until we can get this fucking alien clown out of you. If it means letting you feed off my fear a bit, that’s fine. God knows I’ve got plenty of fear.”

“Faced up to them all anyway,” says Richie, squeezing back three times. He looks down at their joined hands, then looks up at Eddie, then chews his lower lip before he says, “So—are we—this, now? Because I dunno if you noticed but I’m not the hot catch I used to be.”

“I noticed,” says Eddie. “You live in a fucking sewer and you haven’t changed out of your clothes in _months_. You probably reek to high heavens now. I don’t know why I—The only reason I’m holding your hand by now is because this is a dream and I can’t catch shit in dreams.”

Richie brings their joined hands up together and says, “Oh? So you won’t mind if I do this, then?” Then he presses a kiss to Eddie’s knuckles, and Eddie’s heart beats fast against his chest, the arcade token feeling hot against his skin. His cheeks are burning. His heart is a rabbit in a cage trying to escape into Richie’s chest. Or maybe elope with Richie’s heart. “I mean, if you do actually mind I can back off and we can just forget—”

“I don’t mind,” says Eddie. “And I don’t want to forget this or what you said in the cistern.” He sucks in a deep breath. “Yes,” he says, being brave. “Yes, we can be—this. I—Take me out to dinner first, Rich.”

“You want a proper date with me,” says Richie, with a slightly gobsmacked look on his face, “the guy currently possessed by a sewer-dwelling flesh-eating alien monster ghost, who can’t go out in public because of the _gaping chest hole_.”

“We’ll figure something out,” says Eddie. “Ideally, we’ll figure out how to deal with the monster ghost before we go on the first date. But realistically, we’ll figure something out about the date.” _I love you, I love you._ “This doesn’t count, by the way,” he adds. “As a date. I expect better.”

“Sure, lemme think about how much better I can make it while stuck in the goddamn sewers,” Richie huffs, but he’s smiling, the fingers of one hand loosely curled now around Eddie’s wrist. “Lemme see if I can find a restaurant down there that serves something other than pisswater and rats.”

“Ugh, fine, I’ll find one for you,” says Eddie.

“Aw, Eds, you spoil me.”

“Don’t call me Eds.”

Beyond them, the last of the turtles blinks at them, before it’s claimed by the surf.


	3. my lifeline still hums and sings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Vienna Teng's "Goodnight New York".
> 
> **content warning:** gaslighting and manipulation from Pennywise. this fuckin clown's a creep.

Ms. Jamison at the library, it turns out, is Ms. Catherine Jamison, assistant-turned-head librarian in the wake of Mike’s departure, also known as little Cathy, the kid that Ben used to babysit sometimes for some extra cash for building materials. It’s strange seeing her now, in a smart pantsuit and cat-eye glasses when Eddie is so used to seeing her in a little dress with pink hearts screaming for ponies.

“Yes, well, I grew up and learned ponies were not for little girls from poor little towns in little old Maine,” says Cathy, when Eddie brings this up at her new desk. Unlike Mike, so far as he knows, her office is not surrounded by occult artifacts and books. She peers at him over her cat-eye glasses, her eyes hard enough that he squirms under them. “So. Eddie Kaspbrak. Mike said you’d want a job and access after hours.”

“Yeah,” says Eddie. “I already dropped off my resumé yesterday with your secretary—”

“I got it and read it,” says Cathy. “Risk analysis, huh? Cozy job in a good city. Why’d you quit?”

Fuck, why did Eddie think this would be easy? He’s only been in this office for three minutes and already he wants out of here.

“I, uh, wanted a fresh start,” he says. “I got divorced from my wife, just recently, and I couldn’t really stay in New York.” He shrugs. “Too much of her there. The job—well, uh, I guess I just woke up one day and realized I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

Which is a pretty sanitized account of what had really happened, which was that Eddie had a breakdown at work and then quit right afterwards, because all his colleagues kept looking at him with eyes full of pity, like they thought they knew what he was grieving. _Sorry for your loss, but hey, you’re rid of the old ball and chain now!_ God, no, fuck no. Sure, the divorce hurts, but it’s been a long time coming, it’s a boil that’s been lanced. His grief is different. His grief and his love are tied up all together, and weigh as much as the corpse of his best friend in his arms.

Cathy stares at him for a little while longer, then huffs out a sigh. “And so you moved back to Derry?” she asks. “There are better towns to move to. There are bigger libraries that pay more that you can work in, if you really want to work in a library.”

“There’s just—something about Derry’s library,” says Eddie, a little evasively, “that’s pulling me in. I used to live here before, and I think it’s past time I gave back, right?” He gives her a winning smile, and hopes it doesn’t look too forced.

Cathy drums her manicured nails against the surface of her desk. Then she sighs. “Well, beggars can’t be choosers,” she says, and stands up. “Come to work tomorrow at 9 AM, Mr. Kaspbrak. Financial Services could use someone of your caliber.” She pinches the bridge of her nose and says, “They could use pretty much anyone.”

Eddie blinks at her, and says, “Wait—is that it?”

“Mike vouched for you,” says Cathy, and Eddie is never going to say a word against nepotism ever again, if it gets him a job this easily. “And we, unfortunately, need a _lot_ of help finances-wise. Library budgets are, if you’ll excuse the crassness, generally fucked.”

“Oh,” says Eddie.

“You’re a risk analyst, you can lessen some of the burden on our budget,” Cathy continues. “You’re—well, you’re actually overqualified for the job, speaking frankly, and we have a skeletal department in Financial Services as it is. You can start as its manager tomorrow, and we’ll see how it goes from there. And I’ll grant you access to the library after hours, too, for—whatever it is you wanna do here.”

“Great,” says Eddie. “Hey, uh—did Mike leave anything behind here, before he left?”

“You mean the collection of, and pardon the crassness again, occult bullshit I have to deal with in the basement?” says Cathy, dryly. “Yes. He did. But at least he left a hefty donation of books from his private collection that I can put on display.” She cocks her head to the side. “Why?”

“Just wanna take a couple home to read,” says Eddie. “Just for kicks. Oh, and—have you got any favorite restaurants around here?”

“Jade of the Orient,” Cathy instantly says. “Again, why?”

“Anywhere but that,” says Eddie, shuddering at the memory of the things that came from the fortune cookies. “I promised someone a date.”

\--

It turns out there’s an Italian place in town that sells some passably good pasta. Eddie heads there to get a salad and one order of carbonara, and then sits on the sidewalk outside next to the storm drain and deposits the carbonara in front of it. “Richie, if you’re there, I got you some food,” he says. “Rich?”

“I’m here,” Richie confirms after a moment, a growl to his voice, and Eddie sees a hand—furred and clawed—dart out of the storm drain to yank the carbonara inside. With the same growl in his voice, he adds, “Give—Fuck, just give me a second, I—I’ve been having a shitty day.”

Eddie turns towards the storm drain. “What’s going on?” he asks.

“Fucking It fucking shifting me when I didn’t _fucking ask_,” Richie mutters. With every word, the growl lessens until he sounds human again. Until he sounds more like himself. “Fuck. I hate this.”

“Me too,” says Eddie. Suddenly all he wants to do is reach for Richie and pull him into a hug, but the most he can do is drop his hand into the storm drain and hope Richie’s feeling more himself than It. After a moment’s hesitation, he does, and feels a cold, clammy hand squeeze tight before letting go. “Jesus! Fuck, that’s cold.”

“I’m dead and living in a sewer,” says Richie. “What did you expect me to feel like, a furnace?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie mutters, and discreetly wipes down his hand with an antibacterial wipe. He cracks the plastic container of his salad open and spears a bit of lettuce onto his fork. “I got a job at the Derry library, by the way. Financial Services. I did research and I’m in the department that’s in charge of not only their funds but also how to raise those funds. Like, yeah, state and government funds are a part of library funds but they’re not actually a huge part, most of what they get is from tax funds and then donations from library-goers, at least here in Derry. Cathy—that’s Mike’s successor, you know, the kid Ben used to babysit—”

“Wait, the kid who used to yank on my hair and cry because I didn’t wanna be her fucking pony?” Richie asks, incredulously. “Her?”

“Yeah, her,” says Eddie, snorting out a laugh at the memory. “Remember when she tried to steal my fanny pack and started crying because I wouldn’t let her take a look inside it?”

“I think she broke a window just from crying so hard,” says Richie. “Oh my god. Did you make her cry?”

“Why the fuck would I make the person I’m trying to work for cry?” Eddie says. “Although I will admit I think she might’ve cried out of relief afterwards. She mentioned Financial Services was pretty barebones.”

“Holy shit, you’re a financial Superman,” Richie says, marveling. “Swooping in with your pressed suit and your anal-retentive ass to save the day for libraries in Derry. Telling them not to touch this book or this idea or they’ll go way over budget.”

“I’m only managing their funds because I want access to their shit after hours,” says Eddie. “Also, you weren’t this interested in my job before.”

“I wasn’t stuck in a sewer with fucking nothing to do but try not to let a killer clown ghost take over me before,” says Richie. “When all you know is greywater and a dumb fucking clown hammering at your skull 24/7 trying to make you eat people, risk analysis starts to sound real exciting in comparison.”

“I’d ask how you’re doing but that sounds like a good summary,” says Eddie, wincing. “How’s the skull?”

“Could do with less clown but it’s not cracked yet,” says Richie. “What’re you eating?”

“Salad,” says Eddie.

“_Why,_” says Richie. “The fuck, man?”

“It’s healthy,” says Eddie.

“It’s sad is what it is,” says Richie. “I died and got dragged into the sewers and _I’m_ crying for you, Jesus. Eds. Live a little! Accept burgers into your life!”

“Fuck you,” says Eddie, cheerfully. “I’ll eat a burger if you willingly eat a salad, how about that?”

There’s a groan from the sewers, and Richie says, “God, no. I don’t think I could eat a salad, anyway, not—not right now, with It. Meat’s really more its thing, and all. The pasta I’m barely managing to get down.” There’s a pause, then, “But god, I missed actual food. Fuck, is this actually any good or am I just biased from the hunger? I can’t really tell anymore.”

“Honestly, it’s not that good,” Eddie admits. “So—hang on, by meat do you mean _specific_ meat, or just any kind of meat? Does it need to be prepped in some way?”

“Anything but people,” Richie says, firmly. “I dunno how It likes its people but I prefer my steaks well-done and strictly made out of animals.”

“So next time I could drop off a burger, hypothetically, and you’d be able to eat it,” Eddie concludes. “How about candy bars?”

“You know what, sure,” says Richie. Eddie sees his elbows poking out of the sewer, like he’s resting them on a table. “It’s like you said, right? It has to play by the rules of the things it shifts into. And since I’m possessed by It, it has to play by my rules, most of the time.” He laughs, a little, and it echoes oddly in the sewers. “No wonder it keeps trying to turn into anything else besides me. The scariest thing about me’s probably just how big my dick is.”

“I thought that was your five-foot forehead,” says Eddie.

“_Ouch_, that was a good one,” says Richie. He slips into a Voice, like a radio announcer: “Ladies and gents, I’m pleased to announce that Eddie Kaspbrak has just gotten off a good one! **what will _he do next, do you know? will he sink or will he float? only one way to find out, richie, all you have to do is just reach out, he’s so close—_**no! No, no—”

“Richie?” Eddie says, alarmed. He turns on his heel, pushes off the sidewalk and crouches down in front of the storm drain. He can’t see Richie. “Rich, come on, talk to me—”

“I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry,” says Richie, sounding wrecked, _afraid_, none of the levity from just a few minutes before left in his voice. Eddie thinks suddenly of what Mike had said. It could make them see anything, and it hadn’t needed to possess them. With Richie essentially under its power, what else can it do? It’s already taking his talent for voices and twisting it around to use against them both. “Eddie—I can’t stay.”

“Rich!” Eddie calls, but he hears the sound of footsteps, growing more and more distant. “Richie! Richie, it’s _me_, you don’t have to go, we’ll—”

_He’s gone._

\--

Richie doesn’t talk to Eddie for a day or two.

It’s—fucked up, he knows. Eddie upended his whole life to come back here to Derry so he could get Richie out of the sewers, he’s not going to be pissed at Richie just because It managed to fuck up their—their _date_, Jesus. It counts, even with the way it ended. Even then, the cold remnants of his heart still flutters at the thought of it, of Eddie’s hand touching his for even the briefest of moments.

But It had managed to seep in and kick what little peace they’d won all to pieces, with that damn voice breaking the radio announcer’s. And now he thinks—

Had the carbonara been real? Had Eddie chatting about his job been real, complaining about juggling finances for a library? Had—There are two moments in Richie’s head, where Eddie pulled his hand away from the storm drain, one too slow and one too fast. He—He _thinks_ the touch had been just a heartbeat too slow to break easily. He thinks. He’s not sure.

He’d always known It to be a sadistic piece of shit, but this is a whole new level of utterly fucked up.

**_the fun’s just beginning,_** It whispers, sing-song.

Richie slams the heel of his palm against his forehead and snaps, “Shut the _fuck_ up. What the fuck—What are you _doing_ to my head?”

**_nothing,_** It says, and Richie feels an ache in the back of his head. When he shuts his eyes, he can see the deadlights, spinning in the darkness. **_i’m not doing anything, you’re just remembering things wrong._**

“And whose fucking fault is that?” Richie asks. “Because I remembered things fine before you came along, you little bitch.”

**_sure about that?_** And the hell of it is, It doesn’t even sound like it’s trying to taunt him. It just sounds concerned. Richie knows, intellectually, that It’s lying through the teeth it doesn’t have anymore, that if It knows how to turn into other people to fly under the radar before it kills someone then it can act like a concerned friend to the guy it’s trying to turn into its new vessel. But god, It sounds so _real_. **_i want you in good shape, richie, i would never hurt you. but if you hurt yourself, then what am i going to do?_**

“Go fuck yourself,” Richie hisses. Hurt flares up at the back of his mind, and he says, “Yeah, fuck you. I don’t give a flying fuck about your feelings, you shit-ass clown, don’t try to make me think you give a single shit about mine.”

**_i’m hurt,_** It whispers. **_i care about you, richie. i missed you when you were gone, did you know? now that i’ve got you, i never want to leave you._**

Bile rises in the back of Richie’s throat. He chokes it down. “_Fuck you,_” he snarls, and the sound echoes around the cavernous sewer that’s become his home. “Fuck you, leave, _leave_.”

It’s a vain hope, but It retreats for now. Richie breathes out slow, scrubs a hand over his eyes. God, he misses the Losers. He misses the easy camaraderie, the way they all fit together, jagged edges and all, even twenty-seven years after.

He misses Eddie, like he misses the sunshine on his skin.

He closes his eyes and breathes out slow. _Please be asleep. Please let me in. Please._

\--

Richie opens his eyes on the rooftop of a college dorm building, the New York City skyline somewhere beyond them. Eddie sits on the edge, too old for the NYU hoodie he’s wearing but not for the bottle of beer in his hand, and Richie’s heart beats fast. In Eddie’s dreams he’s alive and breathing again, his heartbeat a steady drumbeat in his chest.

Eddie turns his head to look at him, and breathes out a relieved sigh. “Thank fucking god you showed up, Rich,” he says. “I’ve been worried sick for _days_. Where were you?”

“The sewers,” Richie answers, sitting right down next to him. Their feet dangle off the edge together, and below them, people are milling about, stumbling home and going out. “Where else can I go?”

“The townhouse,” says Eddie. “Ben and Mike saw you there, you could come there if you wanted. To recuperate.” He puts the beer down between them and looks at Richie, and says, “For what it’s worth, before Pennywise showed up like the world’s most murderous fucking chaperone, I liked the date. It was—nice.”

“High praise coming from you,” Richie teases, lightly bumping his shoulder.

“Shut the fuck up, dickhead, I haven’t done a lot of dating,” Eddie mutters, flushing bright red. “Myra and I were set up together on a blind date, and it—didn’t feel as good, as the one we had.”

“Fuck, that’s kinda sad,” says Richie. “I live in a sewer and I’m still a better date than the former Mrs. K.” The former _former_ Mrs. K, on the other hand—yeah, no, not hard to be a better date than her either, he figures. The bar’s pretty low if Richie, undead and possessed and chaperoned by an evil murderclown, can still give Eddie a pretty good time while trapped in the fucking sewers.

“Yeah, well,” says Eddie, “I—like you already. I’m predisposed to liking you.” He huffs out a breath. “Even if the height of your sense of humor is bad puns about fucking my mom.”

“It’s a classic,” Richie stoutly says. Hesitantly, he lets his fingers creep closer towards Eddie’s, and tries to look away, down towards the people moving about their night below them. He can’t hear their conversations from up here. “Did you do this a lot?” he asks.

“Back in college, yeah,” says Eddie. “When the neighbors got too loud but I didn’t feel like leaving the building. I conned someone into letting me have the key to the roof and started coming up here sometimes.” He leans up and looks up at the stars, but Richie’s eyes are only on him, on the line of his neck, his profile tilted up towards the sky. Richie’s mouth goes dry. “Will you look at that,” Eddie murmurs, “those stars look like a turtle.”

“I guess they do,” Richie says, looking at Eddie. Their fingers are touching now, and Eddie’s made no move to pull his hand away. Richie wants to—to take a picture of this moment, somehow. Bring it out into the real world, as irrefutable proof against Its whispers: _Eddie came here for me. There are people who love me, and you are not one of them._ “Hey, uh—where’d Mike and Ben go? Where’s everybody else?”

“Looking for ways to get you out of the sewer,” says Eddie. “Mike’s leaning on the contacts he made out of Derry, Bill’s poking around in England for any help, Bev and Ben are coming by maybe a few weeks from now, Stan’s been hitting the occult bookstores in Atlanta from what I hear.”

Richie taps his fingers lightly against the line of Eddie’s index finger. “But you came all the way out here to Derry,” he says, quietly.

“I’m the only one who could afford to,” says Eddie. “I told you that already.” Stan will only come to Derry, Richie’s certain, with _all_ the other Losers. And the other Losers were never all that enthusiastic about going back to their childhood hometown. He’s glad they’re not here, not yet—Ben and Mike have already seen him like this, pale and scared and halfway to gone. Bev’s already seen him in dreams once, and even she couldn’t pull him out of the darkness in time. Out of dreams, it’s hard to tell if she’d been a beat too slow, if she hadn’t moved at all, if she’d stared in stunned horror instead as It pulled him into the bathtub, into the pipes.

Here, outside of Its influence, it’s easier to remember the truth: she’d reached into the bathtub to try and save him. Her fingers had brushed against his, and It had tried to haul her in too, crooning about her being Daddy’s little girl.

Richie’d done the only thing he could think of: he slapped her hand away and let the blood take him.

He should’ve done the same for Eddie. The problem is that he’s always been a sucker for Eddie Kaspbrak. The problem is that he’s selfish, and scared, and Eddie is looking at him like maybe he can be saved, after all. Like Richie isn’t dead already, just animated by a clown ghost that wants to keep on eating children.

Isn’t that sad.

“But I think,” Eddie says, pulling Richie out of his thoughts, “it won’t be too long before we all do get together. I know it. I don’t know how I know, but I know it.”

And Richie can’t even argue with that. He can hear the countdown ticking in the back of his mind, the seconds till all the Losers are back in Derry falling away with each tick. It’s unavoidable, inevitable, one day all the Losers will be back in town and then—well, what will It do, then? What would Richie do, to keep them all safe, these people he loves more than himself?

He doesn’t know. He really doesn’t. He just knows that It wants them all here, wants to feast on them, and It wants to do it using Richie’s fucking body.

“Stronger together,” Richie murmurs, trying to convince himself. Eddie smiles, and squeezes his hand, and okay, maybe he does believe that, a little bit. Up here on a New York City rooftop, with the stars twinkling above them and the city sparkling below them, it’s easy to believe anything.

“You know I used to love this city?” Eddie asks.

“_Really,_” says Richie.

“Yeah, before I met Myra,” says Eddie. “I mean, it was smoggy and shitty even then, but I was high off independence and it was the first big city I ever lived in. After I graduated and we got married, though,” and he trails off, then shrugs. “She knew a lot of crime statistics,” he says. “Especially about my neighborhood. And—I know it was fucked up, looking back, I know what we had wasn’t really _love_, but when you’re used to something, even when it’s bad for you, you don’t actually—you don’t want to lose it. You don’t want to find out who you are without it.” He looks down at their joined hands, and says, “So we moved in together, and I got a steady job, and for over a decade I suffocated and didn’t even know it.”

Richie thinks of LA, of the bright lights that had blinded him when he first came there, with stars in his eyes and a dream. “I think I get it,” he says. “I mean, obviously, not in a relationship, but—I get it. About the city. About being used to something even when it’s fucked up as all hell.” Like being a forty-year-old closet case even in the year 2016, even when it’s easier now to be gay than it had been in 1989, or even 2006. At some point it had become far, far easier to stay there than to come out, and now—well, here he is. Dead and possessed, sick like his Aunt Christine used to say about _those poor homosexuals_, clucking her tongue. Dead like so many others, but his name won’t be going on any quilts.

Eddie doesn’t ask, thankfully. There are things neither of them can say, not unless they’re on the brink of death, and Richie already told him his big secret, there’s nothing left. Now they’re here, on the edge of something, feet dangling out into thin air, but in no hurry to jump. Richie doesn’t need them to jump, right now, he knows what Eddie wants to say—in every squeeze of Eddie’s hand, in every touch, in every word.

Does he want Eddie to say it back? Well. Yeah. It’s been a fantasy since Richie was thirteen to hear Eddie say it back. But it’s _Eddie’s_ choice, and Richie’s not going to push him, especially not now when they both know Eddie could do way better than an undead closet case in a sewer with a demon clown in his head.

“How’s the new job?” Richie asks, instead, and Eddie groans, throwing his head back. “Oh, that bad, huh?”

“The _repair budget_ alone,” Eddie says, helplessly. “Bowers broke through a fucking window and kicked over a bunch of shit and dragged that goddamn knife along walls, not to mention the legal fees. I’m half-tempted to bring him back to kill him myself, since what in the _fuck_ was the point of fucking up the library? Now we have to shell out more money than we can afford because of all the fucking budget cuts!”

“What in the fuck was the point of fucking up Ben?” Richie says, dryly. “Bowers was a psycho and a bully. I guarantee you, fucking shit up gave him a sick, sick joy. Especially if that shit belonged to us Losers. It—_liked_ him, for that. Pushed him in deeper.” And he knows this is true, he realizes, deep in his bones, the way he didn’t before It started rooming with him in his own brain. Jesus. “Don’t ask me how I know that, I’ll puke,” he adds, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

“Duly noted, I won’t,” says Eddie, looking a little green around the gills himself. But he hasn’t let go of Richie’s hand. “But no, seriously, there are _so many budget cuts_, and for what? For _what_? We’re not even on a shoestring budget! We’re on a—Fuck, we’re on a budget made of _threads_, the shitty kind that’s gonna snap at any moment! Half the staff is made of interns and volunteers because we can’t afford to pay more people, I got blindingly lucky Mike put in a good word for me, and I’m doing more work than I can be paid for because the Financial Services department is just, like, four people! Including me! And I might be the only one even halfway qualified! We have an intern who can barely understand Microsoft Excel!”

“Oh my god,” says Richie. “Did Mike leave a mess behind or something?”

“Surprisingly no,” says Eddie. “Apparently he smoothed the transition of power as much as possible and made some headway towards improving things before he left. What this is? Is the _best-case scenario_, it could be so, so much worse than it is.” He massages his temples and gives an unhappy grunting noise, shaking his head as if he can’t believe the sheer fucked-upness of the financial situation he’s handling. “I’m writing up a proposal Cathy can take to the mayor, this is insane. Where are the tax funds even going? Fucking _Derry._”

Affection blooms in the center of Richie’s chest, a warmth that spreads in tingles under his skin. God, he loves this man. He loves him so much he’s listening to this rant about libraries and funding and budgets, boring as it would’ve been to Richie before he died. “Ooh, keep talking budgets to me, Eds, you’re really getting me going here,” he says.

“Fuck off, Rich, this is actually a real problem,” huffs Eddie. “The latest editions of the encyclopedia here are from _2011_. Five years out of date! Lots of things have happened in five years!”

“Don’t you have computers?” Richie asks.

“Bowers broke our wi-fi router,” says Eddie, darkly.

“That motherfucker,” says Richie.

“_I know_,” says Eddie, and continues to rant about the budget, about the system, about the repairs and the improvements and how much they’ll all cost, his hand slicing through the air as he talks, the way it used to when they were kids and Eddie got all worked up about something. Richie leans back onto his palms, and basks in this: the sound of Eddie’s voice, the feel of his hand in Richie’s, the stars shining down on them.

Above them, he thinks he can see the shape of a turtle swim past.


	4. a little light is breaking through

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Lewis Watson's "Little Light".
> 
> **content warnings:** Pennywise being a creep and referencing Bev's canonically abusive father. mentions of suicide attempt from Stan. vague allusions to Richie being willing to die if that's what it takes, which can be taken as suicidal ideation.

Sadly, when Ben and Bev show up the next week after that disaster of a first date, they don’t bring their dog along.

“It’s not safe for her in Derry,” Bev points out, and, with a hand on Eddie’s so he doesn’t bristle at her, “she’ll run after anything, Eddie, and there are dangers outside the sewers.” _Too,_ she doesn’t say, and he relaxes, because—well, Richie’s not a danger. Eddie’s made sure, has been supplying him with fast food and candy bars, bacon and hot dogs, and in turn Richie’s been doing okay. Not _great_, and some days are worse than others, a few he doesn’t talk to Eddie at all, but most of the time he’s okay.

Eddie takes Ben with him to walk around the town, and buys an order of fried chicken from the local McDonald’s. He walks up to the storm drain with the box in hand, crouches down, and says, “Hey, Rich, Ben’s here. Also, I got you fried chicken and tissues, wipe the sewer goop off your hands before you start eating.”

“It’s cute you think I’ll get sick off dirty hands when I’m already dead,” Richie says from the sewers, and he leans forward now. It’s hard to see his face in the dim light, and Eddie hasn’t been able to clearly see Richie’s face outside of dreams in a while, but if Eddie were to judge, he’d say Richie looks fine. A little gaunt, and sometimes Eddie catches sight of white patches of makeup on his skin, but today he looks a little more like himself than he did yesterday. “Undead? I don’t know.”

“I think you’d qualify as undead,” says Ben, frowning a little. He crouches down beside Eddie, and Eddie takes a moment to wonder what they must look like to someone passing by: two grown men, talking to the storm drain. Then he decides, eh, fuck it. It’s Derry. They’ve seen crazier shit. “Uh. You okay, Rich?”

“I haven’t eaten anyone yet,” says Richie. “Other than that, _hoo-ee_, Haystack, it’s been shit. It’s been trying to turn into different fears, but I’m keeping it stuck with me, as much as I can.” There’s a pause, during which Eddie figures he probably shrugs. “It takes a form, it has to follow the form’s rules. And I make it a rule not to eat people, so.”

“That’s—actually not a bad plan,” says Ben.

“Yeah, but I gotta be constantly fucking vigilant,” says Richie. “And I still gotta eat.”

“So the chicken,” says Eddie, passing the food over. Richie’s hands dart out of the darkness and pull the food into the sewer, and Eddie uneasily notes the patches of white on his skin, spreading like rashes from poison ivy. “And the burgers. And all the fast food—which, you’re welcome, by the way, I’ve never walked into more fast food restaurants before in my life than I have lately.”

“We all gotta make sacrifices, Eds,” says Richie. “Anyway, I think it’s working? Or at least I’m not fucking starving most of the time.”

Ben looks at Eddie, like he’s figuring something out. “Eddie, you think it’s working?” he asks.

“Well, yeah,” says Eddie, raising an eyebrow.

“Then it’s working,” says Ben, which is—a strange thing to say, honestly. But in Derry, where thinking makes something so, it also makes perfect sense. “But also—does it have to be you? Do you have to sit by the storm drain the whole time? You could just drop the food off, or ask someone else to drop the food off.”

“I don’t know anyone in this town now,” Eddie points out. “I’m not asking the interns to drop food off at the sewers, are you kidding me, they’re fucking _idiots_.”

“They’re teenagers,” Richie reminds him.

“_Idiots_,” Eddie reiterates. “And I want to talk with Richie, and because of this shit it’s either this or dreams.”

“Be nice to the teenagers, Eddie,” says Ben, which, of course he’d say that. “I don’t know, I just—after It, I thought you’d steer clear of sewers more. And, no offense, Rich, but if I got possessed by a murderous alien clown, I would not want Bev near any sewers. I’d miss her, but if I were possessed and she was near, it—probably wouldn’t be pretty.” _I know,_ he doesn’t say, but it’s there in his words, in the parallels he’s drawing between Eddie and Bev. Eddie knows, if Ben and Richie’s positions were reversed, if _Ben_ were the one down there and not Richie, Eddie’d be worried for Bev too.

He can’t help but bristle anyway. “Listen—” he starts.

“Eh, none taken,” says Richie, “but also, who else is going to fight me about hand wipes? Not a fucking intern who doesn’t know their way around Excel, that’s for sure. Definitely not Cathy.”

“Wait, Cathy Jamison?” Ben asks. “Little girl who wanted a pony? I remember her.”

“Yeah, lemme tell you, it’s fuckin’ weird talking to her now and remembering she used to try and make Richie give her rides,” Eddie says, massaging his temples. “He had the worst growth spurt, and she was, what, four, five?”

“I think she fucked up my spine for a while there, the kid was heavy as fuck,” Richie speculates from the sewer. “It’s weird that you’re working for her now.”

“Officially,” Eddie says. “Unofficially I’m the library’s budget guy now. They have to screen shit through me.” He shrugs. “I mean, Cathy still gets final say, and she has the right to overrule me, but she usually doesn’t.”

“You come off like a sensible person,” Ben points out. “Talking to Richie in storm drains aside.”

“I said that already and he said nobody in Derry would notice shit,” says Richie.

“And they haven’t,” Eddie says.

Ben cocks his head to the side. “Is it because of you?” he asks. “It made people look the other way. You’re possessed by It right now, are you doing that?”

“Fuck, I dunno,” says Richie. “I’m new to weird clown magic, Haystack, I have no idea how any of it works. I could be doing it and I’d have no real clue.” He leans forward, and Eddie catches a glint of light off Richie’s glasses, one lens still cracked. “And before you ask I don’t actually give enough of a fuck about the weird clown magic to do more with it. I—” He hesitates, and says, “I mean, yeah, it would be fuckin’ cool, I’m not gonna lie. But what’s the cost? What’s the price? What else is It going to take from me?”

“What else?” Ben asks, frowning.

Richie hesitates, for just a heartbeat too long. Like he’s trying to keep something back, pretending to be okay. “Yeah, ‘cause It already killed me,” he says. “It’s gonna have to get creative, and I do not want firsthand experience at just how creative it can get. I already—I have a fucking _chest hole_.”

“Which you should probably get disinfected at some point,” Eddie mutters.

“Eddie, I’m dead and live in the sewers, disinfecting the gaping hole in my chest is the least of my problems,” says Richie.

“We don’t know if it’s going to stay once we get you back,” says Eddie. _Once we get you back_, not _if_, because that much is a certainty, and Ben’s nod affirms that belief. They are not losing another Loser. They are absolutely not losing Richie to It again. “And considering how long you’ve spent in close contact with fucking grey water and shit, it’s probably going to be infected.”

“If it stays when you get me back I’m fucking dead,” says Richie, sounding bitter and resigned. “But—well, like you said, we don’t know. Derry magic does whatever it wants, I just try to float with it.”

Eddie winces. Beside him, Ben’s eyebrows draw together in a pained way, and he says, “That’s—maybe not the best word choice, Rich.”

“...fuck, you’re right,” says Richie, after a moment. “_Shit_. I didn’t even think about it until you said it.”

Mike’s voice whispers in the back of Eddie’s head, just then: _It’s had time to subtly influence his way of thinking._ How long has Richie been down here? How long has Richie been conscious and undead, and aware of his unwanted passenger? Eddie doesn’t know, doesn’t think he wants to even ask. How aware is Richie of It influencing him, beyond just the obvious shifting?

Eddie reaches out a hand towards the sewer, unthinking, before Ben can react. There’s only the briefest brush of something cold and clammy against his skin before he hears the sound of a foot splashing back through water. “You should really take Ben’s advice, Eds,” says Richie, sounding—_scared_. “Stop putting your hands in sewers. You don’t know what you’ll find down here.”

Ben doesn’t say anything, but his eyes are on Eddie, and there’s something like understanding behind them. Like if it were Bev down there, Eddie couldn’t stop him either from doing this stupid shit, even knowing what could happen.

“I know what I’ll find down there, asshole,” says Eddie, making a show of wiping his hand off on his shirt. “Germs and grey water and piss and shit, and one shithead with a giant fucking forehead and a gaping chest hole he _won’t fix_.”

Richie laughs, from the sewer. Ben flinches back, almost instinctively, but relaxes, as if reminding himself who’s in the sewer this time. Eddie reaches for his hand and squeezes, reassuringly, once before letting go.

He gets it, is the thing. Pennywise’s laughter is scored into his memory, the soundtrack of his worst nightmares. It slobbered and _giggled_ when it loomed over a thirteen-year-old Eddie, one eye always fixed somewhere else, like it was watching someone else, like it was performing. The horrible sound of that laughter’s going to stay.

But Richie doesn’t laugh like that. He sounds almost relieved, even, that he can still laugh. Eddie doesn’t manage to suppress his smile in time, and even places his hand as close to the storm drain as he can get, palm flat against the concrete.

“I’ll think about it,” Richie says. “Ben, tell me about—fuck, I don’t know. Buildings. Bev. How you got so hot and won the reunion.”

Ben coughs, and says, “I, uh—do you know the new Riverside Studios? The one the BBC’s using now for filming?”

Eddie squints at him. “No?” he ventures.

“Oh, yeah, I did a bit about that one,” says Richie, sounding almost wistful. That’s right. He’d been a comedian, he’d peddled shitty jokes to people and seemed to thrive on their attention onstage. “All those aerial shots looked like a dick, so I. _May_ have made some assumptions about your dick size. Sorry. I know now that it’s probably way bigger than I thought if Bev—”

“Please shut up, Richie,” Eddie mutters.

“Yeah, well, you’re hardly the first person to,” says Ben, dry as dust, but he smiles. “Beep beep, Trashmouth. But yeah, I’m the one who did that, and I swear to you I didn’t think the layout would look so phallic until the Internet jumped on it.” He leans back on his palms now, says, “I was really thinking in terms of—open spaces, you know? Ease of access for disabled persons, big enough hallways to walk and talk, transparency. Knocking down walls so it’d feel less claustrophobic and more like a place to socialize.”

“Did it work?” Eddie asks. God, he kind of wishes Ben had designed his old job’s building. After Derry, the damn place felt almost suffocating, all the time, so many people crammed into stainless steel walls, so many of them looking at Eddie and not seeing how much he was hurting until it was too late. Maybe if Ben had designed the building…

“Yeah,” says Ben, with a little proud smile. Eddie remembers that same smile shining out of Ben’s face, almost thirty years ago, as the seven of them climbed down into their clubhouse.

“Well, now I wanna go there,” Richie pipes up. “Sounds like a fancy clubhouse.”

“Kinda is,” says Ben. “Just with more cameras around. You’d love it, especially for Red Nose Day. They invite a lot of comedians around then.”

“If I ever get out of this town,” says Richie, wistfully, “I might check it out.” _If._ “How’s Bev?” he asks, and Eddie graciously doesn’t call him out on the poor attempt at changing the subject.

“She’s doing fine,” Ben says. “She’s divorcing her husband, but she’s trying to get her designs back from him. A lot of the company’s rallied behind her, thank god, and her lawyers are _damn_ good, but it’s an uphill battle that she’s fighting. That _we’re_ fighting,” he corrects. “Well. Mostly she’s fighting it, I massage her feet when she comes home.”

“The lucky little shithead,” Richie says.

“Which one?” Eddie asks.

“Bev, duh,” says Richie. “Although Ben got lucky too because she grew up insanely attractive and successful, I guess.”

“Thanks,” says Ben. “We’ve been insanely lucky, finding each other again.” He fidgets a little, looks down at his hands and rubs a thumb absently over the base of his ring finger. “Still, sometimes I just—I want her to be happy, y’know? She deserves to be. But I don’t know if it’s with me she’ll find that happiness with.”

“Are you asking for relationship advice,” says Eddie, slowly, “from the recent divorcee and the sewer-dwelling pisswater-covered bachelor?”

“You’ve hit rock bottom,” Richie informs Ben. “Just in terms of who you’re getting your relationship advice from. Why not ask Bill?”

“Bill’s not here,” Ben points out. “And I am going to ask him, and Stan.”

“Aren’t you going to ask Bev?” Eddie asks, and Ben pauses for a moment. “Since it is her happiness we’re talking about here.” He rubs a thumb over the space where his wedding band used to be, and thinks—he and Myra were doomed from the start, really, now that he’s looking back with clearer eyes. But the inability to really _communicate_ never helped. “You should talk to her,” he says, stronger now.

Ben doesn’t say anything, but he looks at Eddie as if Eddie’s just cleared away a cloud, and now he’s looking at something more clearly than he ever has before. “You’re not wrong,” he says, finally. “I can ask her. I know she wants her designs back, wants to start over, but after that—I didn’t know what.”

“Well, she does, at least, if you guys bought a damn dog,” says Richie. Eddie looks down towards the sewers, and sees only the faintest movement in the darkness. “What? I do a lot of eavesdropping. Not a whole lot else to fucking do.”

“You better not be eavesdropping in the middle of—” Eddie starts.

Ben blushes crimson, and buries his face in his hands. Eddie half-hears something that sounds vaguely like _the fucking fair all over again_, which, what is he even talking about?

“God, _no_,” says Richie. “I have my limits. I do not want to know who you or anyone else in this town might be jacking off to.”

“Thank you for the basic decency, Rich,” Ben says, his voice muffled by his hands. “I’ll talk to Bev and I won’t tell her what you said about eavesdropping on people. Just, y’know.”

“No eavesdropping on either of you while you’re fucking, got it,” says Richie.

“Or at all,” says Ben.

“I _got it_, Jesus, who do you think I am,” Richie huffs, “the fucking CIA or some shit?” There’s a sigh, and he says, “Just—I tried to talk to Bev and Stan, besides Eddie, but I kept getting cut off from Bev every time and Stan’s too fucking far, the weird sewer clown magic’s not getting any signal from Atlanta. I need you guys to relay a message for me.”

“Yeah,” says Eddie. “Of course, Rich, what do you need?”

“Ask them about the Deadlights,” Richie says. “Whatever they know. Maybe work with Mike about it, he’s got the research shit down and they’re the ones with the firsthand experience, and, well.” He leans forward, fingers peeking out of the pavement, and Eddie’s stomach roils at the sight of faded white paint on Richie’s skin. As he watches, Richie scratches over a bloom of stark white paint over a knuckle, as if trying to rub it away. “Ben, you said earlier that if it were you in my place, you wouldn’t want Bev near the sewers. Actually? She’d maybe be the safest out of all of us, as long as I’m still alive.”

“What are you talking about?” Ben asks, frowning. He looks so much like the chubby little nerd Eddie knew as a kid when he does that, god, Eddie’s a little thrown by the memory that bubbles up just then: Ben, at fourteen, making the same confused face at him and Richie during the Fourth of July festival. They’d gotten so caught up in their bickering that time that they had completely ignored Ben for ten whole minutes.

...huh, so that’s what the comment about the fair was about. Eddie resists the urge to flick Ben’s (stupidly toned) bicep for that, now.

“It doesn’t like using the Deadlights,” Richie says, his tone distant, like he’s recalling something he doesn’t particularly like. Except this isn’t _his_ memory, Eddie realizes, but _Its_. “Sours the meat, apparently. But the people who see the Deadlights, who get away from It—they’re, I don’t know, marked as potential hosts for It? If ever It dies, and they’re in range. And, well, I was the last poor bastard it floated with the Deadlights, and my body was in range.”

“So if we somehow exorcise It from you,” Ben says, “we have to make sure to, what, really destroy it? So it doesn’t possess Bev or Stan.”

“...yeah, sure, let’s go with exorcising It,” says Richie.

“Of course we’re going to exorcise It,” says Eddie. “We’ve been over this.”

Richie just hums in answer, _mm-hmm, sure._ Like he doesn’t completely believe it himself, and Eddie wants to shake him for that. Wants to bundle him up in a car and take him to a therapist because, _Jesus, Richie, are you okay?_ “Yeah, you need to put out the lights,” says Richie. “I don’t know how, but I think if you put out the lights then It’s gone for good. But in the meantime, It’s not gonna try to eat Bev. Or Stan.”

“Still gonna try to kill them, though,” says Eddie.

“Yeah, easier to force your way into someone’s head when they’re in no position to consent,” says Richie. “Tell Bev and Stan that: they’re not on the menu, but they’re on the real estate listing for clown ghosts that want a new body.”

“Duly noted,” says Ben, massaging his temples. “Anything else you want to say?”

“Tell Bev to keep a line open for me,” says Richie, sounding almost sad before his voice shifts, growing deeper and more coaxing as white paint wraps around his fingers like ribbons, “**ask her if _she’s still daddy’s little girl, he missed her so much, is she hanging around with those boys again—_fuck! No, no no** no—I have to go, I’m sorry, I need to _go_.”

“No, Richie, _wait_—” Eddie starts, almost reaching into the sewer before Ben grabs him by the collar of his shirt and drags him back. “You can’t just _go_—”

“You’re not _safe_,” says Richie, then, “I’m not—I’m not safe, not right now, fuck—I’ll talk to you again, just not now, but I need to go, Eddie. I’m not,” and his voice cracks, “_safe_. I’m sorry.”

“Rich,” says Eddie, urgently, trying to pull away from Ben’s grasp, “Richie, fuck, _Richie_, you can’t just—”

“He’s gone,” says Ben, quietly, letting go of Eddie then. “Eddie, he’s not talking.” He nods to the sewer and says, “You heard him. You heard _It_, for a moment. We both did.”

“What,” Eddie scoffs, “are you scared of Richie now or something?”

“No,” Ben says. “Richie’s the least scary person I know. But I’m scared _for_ you.”

Eddie can’t help it. He bristles at that, because people being scared for him have never ended well, historically, for anyone. Especially not Eddie. “I’m fine,” he says. “I’m careful. I wash my hands thoroughly—”

“It isn’t that,” says Ben. He looks at the sewer again, then at Eddie, and says, “You remember after—after Richie died, and we had to drag you away?”

(_he needs his glasses he can’t he can’t see without his glasses let me go he’s still alive we have to go back at least let me find his stupid fucking glasses he can’t come back to us if he can’t see where he’s going he needs those glasses he’s still down there he’s fucking blind without them and he won’t be able to find us we can’t just leave—_)

“Yeah,” says Eddie, scrubbing at his eyes with the heel of his palm. “Yeah, I remember.” He’d probably made Ben and Mike’s injuries worse, fighting so hard to get back, but they had clung on anyway. “What does it have to do with this?”

Ben twists the hem of his shirt in his hand, and he looks so much now like the boy Eddie used to know that for a moment they’re just kids again: a wheezy asthmatic and a fat (_big-boned_) boy, sitting together on a crisp autumn afternoon, coming up with answers for their shared English class. “We all mourned him,” he says. “But yours was different.”

The loss of Richie had changed Eddie, certainly—not completely, but grief changes people, grief not only for the dead but for the never-was. Eddie had taken a look at the half-life he’d lived before Derry and thought, _Richie’s dead because he loved you enough to want you to stay alive more than he wanted to. Don’t waste this chance._ So he hadn’t, as much as it terrified him at the time. The grief had hollowed him out that the fear didn’t quite register as much as it would’ve, with the memory of Richie’s body lying against the cold, damp stone still fresh in his mind.

And then he dreamed of Richie, calling for help, and hope, for the first time in a while, had bloomed like a flower in his chest. Somewhere under the fear, under the worry, some tiny selfish part of him thought _he can come back_, and hope had taken stubborn root in his heart, because what the fuck else does he have if not hope? What the fuck else does Richie have, if not hope?

“He did kinda confess his undying love,” says Eddie, weakly. “I was still reeling from that when he—I guess he called? Is that what we’re calling those now?”

“I mean, that’s one way to put it,” says Ben. “But you were this close to jumping right into the sewer after Richie.”

Eddie can’t dispute that. For one moment there, before Ben had grabbed the back of his collar and pulled him back, that same desperation from the cistern had taken over. _We have to go back._

“We need you up here,” Ben’s saying, and Eddie can only listen. “_He_ needs you up here, not down in the sewers with him.” He squeezes Eddie’s shoulder, gentle, reassuring. “I think he’d agree with me if he were here.”

“You wouldn’t be wrong,” Eddie admits. “I just—every time he walks away, I can’t help but think about all those dreams I had, before I came back here.” He rubs a hand over his elbow, and throws a glance at the sewer, at the darkness beyond it. “How much do you remember of those dreams?” he asks.

“Not a whole lot,” says Ben, shaking his head. “Just—the dream equivalent of white noise, I guess? Everything I saw in it was a blur, and I could barely hear a word Richie was saying. It was like someone’d stuffed my ears up with cotton.”

“I remember them a lot more clearly,” says Eddie. “There was this darkness behind him, and every time, something would pull him back into the dark. A hand, or the leper, or—or kids’ hands. _It_.” He pulls a knee up to his chest, and says, “He screamed. That’s what I keep remembering. That first dream, when It dragged him into the sewer, he was screaming the whole time.” He breathes out slow, the memory bubbling up: Richie, scrabbling at the pavement, trying to stay out in the light, reaching for Eddie. His nails had left bloody scratches in the stone. “I don’t know what It’s doing to him, down there,” says Eddie now. “But whatever it is, it’s hurting him.”

“We’ll get him out,” says Ben.

“I know that,” says Eddie. “I believe that. I’m just not a huge fan of how long it’s taking.”

“Neither am I,” says Ben. “It’s _Richie_ down there, no one is.”

Cold comfort, that, but he’ll take it for now.

\--

“Keep a line open, huh?” Bev says, on the second day, as she and Eddie walk down the street. “I can try, but he’s going to have to figure out a way to help it _stay_ open.”

“I mean,” Eddie starts, thoughtfully, fishing the arcade token out from under his clothes, rubbing a thumb over the half-melted visage, “he did with me, I could ask him. Or…” He stops, then squints down the street. If they go left, and then take a right three blocks down, cutting through an alleyway as a shortcut, then cross the street, they’ll be right in front of the Capitol Theater. “He got this from the Capitol,” he says. “Can’t hurt to see if it’ll work for us.”

So they trudge down to the Capitol. It’s all boarded up now, the letters on the marquee reading “TH NKS F R TH M MOR ES DERRY,” and the vandals have long since left their mark on the place: Eddie can see spray painted slogans and tags on the walls, shattered windows where someone must’ve broken in. Conveniently, there’s a big enough hole in the glass of the doors for Bev to slip her hand through and open the place up from the inside.

Eddie steps into the arcade, and covers his mouth and nose with his shirt. “Fuck, how long has this place been abandoned?” he asks.

“I don’t know, I moved out first before the rest of you,” says Bev, looking around. She smiles, and says, “Hey, Eddie, look—the photobooth’s still there.”

Eddie can’t help the smile that spreads across his face, at the sight of the old booth. They’d all crammed in, the seven of them, with Eddie leading the way, and pulled faces at the camera, giggling all the while. Later, they each claimed strips of photos, wanting a memory of this perfect day. Eddie knows Mike kept his as a bookmark.

He—doesn’t know where his strip went. Must’ve been thrown out, one day, or Myra must be unknowingly keeping it, because who’s going to notice a little slip of photo paper, right?

Eddie’s heart wrenches.

Bev doesn’t say anything. She just takes his hand and squeezes, reassuringly, before letting go and turning to the token dispenser.

Eddie drifts closer to the old Street Fighter machine. God, he and Richie used to play this all the time, he remembers that now—they’d fight over who got Ken and who got Ryu, and they used to shove into each other’s sides to throw the other off his game. Now he pushes at a joystick, and it stays pushed, bent in the new position. “Hey,” he says, to no one in particular, “shithead. Are you here?”

No response.

“We’re getting Bev a token,” says Eddie, because, well, it’s only polite. “So you can talk to her without your chaperone trying to bust your ass. I’m—not completely sure how that works, but I think this is the right thing to do.” He taps his fingers against the console, and says, “We could get Stan one too. He’d want to hear from you, preferably without the screaming and the darkness.”

Still no answer. Eddie huffs out a breath.

Metal clatters. Bev pockets the arcade token, and says, “Okay, I got it, what do I do?”

“I wear mine as a necklace,” says Eddie. “Make it jewelry? It’s gotta be in contact with your skin.” He doesn’t know how he knows this, but—it feels right, that the token should be tucked under his clothes, pressed up against his chest. “I’ve got some leftover crafts supplies, I can probably—”

There’s the sound of a camera flashing, and Bev and Eddie whip around towards the photobooth. The curtain flutters, invitingly. Bev steps in front of Eddie, clutching the token in her hand, and all Eddie can do is follow behind her, praying that what’s behind the curtain is just Richie and not—_It_.

Bev has always been the bravest of all of them. She’s still the one who stabbed Pennywise through the eye when they were thirteen and shitting their pants, still the one who jumped off the cliff first and showed them all up. It makes sense that she’s the one to reach out and push the curtain aside, ready to fight whatever comes out at them.

There’s nothing there.

Well, not nothing, anyway. There’s a message scrawled onto the back of the photobooth, in lipstick: _GET ONE FOR STAN TOO._

“Motherfucker,” says Eddie, breathing out a sigh of relief, “I almost had a _heart attack_.”

Bev’s eyes are shining and wet, but her mouth turns upwards in a small, sad smile. “We will,” she says, to Richie.

They get another token, for Stan this time, and leave the arcade behind. Well, mostly.

Eddie stops when he passes the Street Fighter machine, and blinks at the flickering screen. For a moment, he thinks he can almost see the imprint of a hand pressed to the inside of the screen.

“Eddie?” Bev calls, already pushing the door open.

“Coming,” Eddie answers, and pulls away.

\--

When Stan calls Eddie, a few days after Ben and Beverly leave, he says, “Thanks for the token. I saw him.”

Eddie, in the middle of deep-cleaning one of the bedrooms in a sleepless frenzy (because it’s that or return to the nightmare of Richie dying, of the leper sticking Its tongue in Richie’s throat to drag his dead body back into shuddering, screaming life), sticks Stan on speakerphone and says, “Talk louder, I can’t hear you, I’m _vacuuming_.”

“Knew it,” Stan sighs. “I saw him. He looked—way better than he should have, considering he’s possessed by fucking Pennywise.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t see him before you got the token,” says Eddie, shuddering at the memory of Richie, pale and gaunt, white paint blooming across his arms like bruises, at the memory of how those dreams ended. He prefers dreaming of New York and of California, to that. “How was it?”

“He told me about the Deadlights,” says Stan. “So, yeah, priority number one, if—_when_ I come back to Derry: not dying and not getting possessed by a demon clown from outer space.” There’s a beat, then the sound of Stan’s head thudding against the desk. “It doesn’t make _sense_,” he says, sounding more annoyed and offended than afraid. That was always Stanley, the sort of person who liked things in order, who’d take the time to push down the kickstand on his bike while the rest let their bikes clatter to the ground. “We killed It, it’s supposed to be _over_, we weren’t supposed to deal with this ghost bullshit.”

Eddie lifts up a corner of the carpet and pushes the vacuum underneath, and says, “It’s a shapeshifting monster from beyond our reality, It plays by different rules. We figured some out, we know we can bully it to death, but the rest we’re playing by ear. And at least this time we have Richie on the inside!” Even as he says it, he winces, because—yeah, no. That’s not really a good thing, not for Richie, not for anyone. “We are going to kill It for good,” he says. “We’re going to do it right. And we’ll get Richie out while we’re at it.”

“The ritual Mike found didn’t work, and that took twenty-seven years,” Stan says. “What do you plan to do? Where are you going to start? How long does Richie have left?”

“I don’t know what to say to all of those,” Eddie sighs, letting the carpet drop and turning the vacuum off. The floor’s as clean as it’s going to get with the vacuum, so Eddie pulls on a surgical mask and gloves, and starts digging through his supplies for the wood cleaner and rags. “I picked up some of Mike’s books, but like I said, I don’t know where to start. I’ll call Mike when I’m done cleaning this room.” How long Richie has left is—not something Eddie particularly wants to think about, right now.

“Which room are you cleaning?”

“My old room,” says Eddie. “The one where I got stabbed in the bathroom.”

“I thought they cleaned the bloodstains out,” says Stan.

“They did,” Eddie admits. “I just—needed something to do, that’s all.”

Stan doesn’t say anything for a long time, and Eddie half-thinks he’s hung up on him when Stan breaks the silence with, “I used to have nightmares about the Deadlights. A lot of the time I couldn’t get back to sleep, I was too scared to. Even when we moved out, I’d still—I’d have these dreams, these _visions_, that scared me so much I could barely sleep. So instead I just...did something else, instead.” There’s a soft huff of laughter on the other side, and Stan says, “Patty keeps finding me organizing our sock drawers in the dead of night. I never really told her why until after Derry. You know, she’s usually a pretty organized woman herself, but sometimes when I wake up and I have to do something the socks are mysteriously _dis_organized, and I actually—feel better. Strange, right?”

“What, she messes up your socks on purpose and you’re okay with that?” Eddie asks. “Stan, is that really you or am I talking to a pod person right now?”

“Fucking let me finish, Eddie,” says Stan, a note of irritation seeping into his tone. God. Eddie’s missed him. “Just—you don’t have to bear this alone, you know? If you have nightmares, if you can’t sleep? There’s six other people you can talk to. We’ll do what we can.”

Six. Including Richie.

“I’ll think about it,” Eddie promises. “But I really do have to clean this place up, Stan, it’s a total fucking mess. I think there’s _bedbugs_.”

“There’s a cleaning service in Derry, I know that, I checked,” says Stan.

“They have four two-star reviews!” Eddie says. “I’ll just do it myself. I _am_ doing it myself.” He spreads the polish out onto the floor, careful and methodical. “What—Okay, tell me to fuck off if I’m prying, but what else did you guys talk about?”

There’s a silence on the other end of the line. Eddie imagines Stan rolling his eyes heavenward, and sure enough, he hears Stan heave a long-suffering sigh. “We caught each other up,” Stan says. “And he did talk a lot about you. Seemed pretty happy, actually, so I guess you both managed to get your shit together?”

Eddie says, “Sort. Of?”

“_Sort of,_” says Stan, his voice carefully flat as if he’s trying to contain his incredulity.

“I know he loves me,” says Eddie, “he fucking used his last words for a heartfelt confession, and I—can’t even say it back.” He huffs out a laugh through his mask, and pushes the rag across the floor a little harder than he maybe should. “Months ago I didn’t even know I _swung_ that way, fuck. It’s fucked up, right?”

“Without the context of Derry, yeah,” says Stan, “but then Derry fucked all of us up, Eddie. Even the ones who left.”

“Not you, though,” says Eddie.

“I almost killed myself so I wouldn’t have to go back to Derry,” Stan points out, which, fair, but also, did he really have to bring that up again. “I’m not a great yardstick. My point is: as bizarre and surreal as this situation is, I’m happy for you guys. I really am. Just—” He hesitates.

“Just what?” Eddie asks.

“Be careful,” says Stan. “I trust Richie with my life and yours, but It is a wholly different story. And you never know who might be in charge, sometimes.”


	5. how will i let you slip through?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Local Natives' "When Am I Gonna Lose You".
> 
> **content warning:** canon-typical horror, no real gore though. two homophobic Derry citizens follow Eddie in the last section of the chapter with malicious intent but get scared off by Richie slowly turning into a rotting, waterlogged corpse version of Adrian Mellon. It Ruins Richie's Entire Day Again.

The Falcon, as Eddie recalls, did not start out as a gay bar. In truth it started out as an ordinary bar, but Elmer Curtie did not ask questions, and neither did his employees, and soon enough Derry’s hidden LGBT community started to come around more often. Nowadays, it’s still not overtly a gay bar—no rainbow Pride flags, no neon lights, no real indication that most of its customers are queer in one way or another—but there’s something of an understanding around town.

Eddie ducks into the Falcon by accident, really, a few days after Stan’s phone call. He doesn’t even realize where it is he’s hurriedly slipped into out of the rain, clutching one of Mike’s books protectively to his chest, until he catches sight of Adrian Mellon’s face on the wall. _Beloved Patron,_ the plaque underneath reads, simply, and there are roses underneath the portrait. _Gone but Not Forgotten._

Poor fucking kid. Eddie stands there in front of the portrait a moment, wondering what to do next, before he sighs and says, “I’m sorry.”

There’s really not much else he can do. Mellon’s dead and gone, and even Eddie’s apology (_for what? for not killing the clown right, both times? the clown might’ve killed him but the beating didn’t fucking help_) won’t help him, wherever he’s gone. All he can do is nod, respectfully, to the portrait, and then continue onto the counter for a drink.

The whole time, he tries not to look anyone in the eye. In the back of his head, he can hear his mother howling, _you’ll get sick Eddie don’t go near them you’ll get AIDS like they do in New York and you’ll waste away and die and leave me alone—_

Except.

Except he’s not dead.

So, hah.

He sucks in a breath and straightens up his spine, still clutching the book close to him. He pulls out a bar stool and flags the bartender down, ordering just a lemonade to wait out the rain, then opens the book and starts to read. He only looks up briefly to catch a glimpse of his lemonade being deposited in front of him, and then goes back to reading.

A bar stool beside him scrapes backward. An Scottish voice says, “Well, I’ve seen some things around, but I’ve never seen a man bring a book into a gay bar before.”

Eddie’s breath catches in his throat. “Richie?” he asks, looking up to see—a young man with dark skin and dyed-blonde hair, smiling impishly at Eddie, back against the counter. Not Richie, who used to have a god-awful Scottish Voice when they were kids, one that got worse when he saw Highlander. “Sorry,” Eddie says, sheepishly rubbing the back of his head.

“It’s fine, big man,” says the man. “It’s Sean, actually. Are you waiting on someone?”

“Not really,” says Eddie. “Just needed to come in out of the rain for a time.”

“Ooh, yeah, it’s fuckin’ pissing rain out there,” says Sean. “I don’t blame you.” He taps his fingers against the counter and says, so hopefully, “You know, my place has heating, and my boyfriend doesn’t mind.”

Eddie stares at him. “I’m—dating someone,” he says, and almost unconsciously braces himself for the push, for the charm, remembering all the things his mother used to say, all the things Myra used to whisper about in trepidatious, worried tones. (And _It_, too. _I’ll blow you for free._)

“Oh!” says Sean, snapping his fingers. “The mysterious Richie, then? Oof, ‘m’sorry. Didn’t realize.”

“Yeah,” says Eddie, relaxing a little. “Him.”

“Well, I hope he comes ‘round to pick you up soon,” says Sean, squinting at the rain. “Gonna be rough gettin’ home in this rain.”

“Oh, no, he doesn’t have a car,” says Eddie, and technically, it’s not really a lie. It’s just not the whole truth either. “I’m walking back.”

“Oh, that’s safer once the rain’s done,” says Sean, leaning forward on his elbows to flag down the bartender for a screwdriver. “Hey, whatcha reading?”

Eddie shuts the book, tucks it into his jacket, and says, “Just—some light research, that’s all. I, uh, I’m writing a book on Derry.”

“Can’t imagine there’s a whole lot of interesting shite in Derry,” says Sean, frowning, his fingers drumming against the bar counter. He looks young. God, he’s probably younger than Mellon was. God, kids these days are braver than Eddie could ever hope to be, walking around with their hearts on their sleeves, proud and defiant, raising their middle fingers to a cold and cruel world and shouting _fuck you, we love who we love anyway_. Eddie’s—well, Eddie’s dating someone, but that someone is his undead best friend who’s possessed by a flesh-eating sewer monster, and neither of them have really said the g-word out loud just yet. Nor has Eddie said the l-word. “Other than all the crime, I guess.”

Eddie blinks at him. “What?” he asks.

“I mean, used to be the place was—fucking plagued with murders,” Sean continues. “People would go missing a _lot_, it was like you couldn’t go a week without two new missing posters being put up. Sometimes it got especially bad, and we wouldn’t be allowed outside. I _definitely_ wouldn’t have gone out here, in those bad ol’ days.” He huffs out a breath as the screwdriver’s deposited in front of him, and takes a sip. “But something’s changed. Shifted in the atmosphere.”

“Oh?” Eddie asks, propping an elbow up on the counter. “What do you mean?”

Sean hesitates, then sighs. “I don’t know,” he admits, his Scottish brogue flitting in and out of existence as he speaks. “It just—It feels less suffocating? Less like it’s trying to squeeze the life and soul out of you? But something about it...you know that feeling you get, when you’re—you’re watching a storm buildin’ on the horizon? You’re far enough away that you think it’s gonna pass, but you’re close enough that it just might not.”

“Not really,” Eddie admits. “I just check the weather app on my phone. But I get it, I think.”

“Close enough,” says Sean, dryly, and Eddie gets the feeling he’s being judged, a little. Which, wow, this coming from the guy choosing to go with a metaphor about storm-watching in 2016. “There’s a storm on the horizon. I don’t know if it’ll hit us, or if it’ll miss us, but it’s coming. I just—I know it in me bones, like my old grandma would say.” He hunches in on himself, takes a sip of his screwdriver. “Don’t ask me how to explain it. I just know it. And—one other thing.”

“What other thing?”

Sean looks away and says, “This is gonna sound bloody insane, but I promise you that it’s the truth. I _swear_, it happened the way I saw it, it looked like something out of a fairy tale. A really fucked-up one.”

Eddie sits up, suddenly. _Richie,_ he knows, deep in his bones, in the core of his very soul. The kid’s talking about Richie. “I’ll believe you,” he says, and means every word. “I’ve seen some weird shit lately.”

“Not as weird as this, I’ll bet,” says Sean. “Um. Okay. So it was just a couple of days ago, right…”

\--

It was a fine autumn afternoon when Sean MacClery, or Sean Mac a’ Cléirich if you wanted to torture yourself, saw the dead man in the Barrens.

His boyfriend Jonny had kicked him out of the apartment for the afternoon so he could have his fuckbuddy Eleanor over. Sean liked Eleanor, she had all kinds of fun gossip that he loved to hear and could bake like a motherfucker, but he and Jonny agreed that neither of them had a voyeurism kink and didn’t particularly want to hear each other having sex with someone else if they weren’t in the same bedroom. So Sean had kissed his cheek and reminded him to wear a damn condom, and then gone to the Barrens to start sketching.

The Barrens weren’t actually _barren_, was the thing. Otherwise Sean would never have started going there for inspiration, because what fun was there in sketching a barren place, after all. No, the Barrens were lush and green, now turning shades of orange and red in the autumn, and more importantly the Barrens did not have people patrolling them to remove possible trespassers from the premises. It was perfect for Sean, who’d had a couple close calls this autumn with the authorities, and didn’t feel like having any more of them. Derry police officers were rather racist, and Sean had no interest in becoming another statistic.

So the Barrens it was. And the Barrens were rapidly becoming his favorite place to visit, just because it was so interesting. Kids tended to play there quite a lot, so Sean sometimes tripped over the remnants of a childish fort, or the traces of a weekend afternoon well-spent, and he’d set up there to sketch a bit. Sometimes he sketched what was in front of him, and sometimes he’d sketch what he figured the kids were playing at that weekend before they left, with their toys and makeshift weapons in the dust.

Today he wandered a little farther than he usually went. He crossed the Kenduskeag while humming his mother’s lullabies under his breath, and walked into the woods with his sketchbook under his arm. His mother used to warn him about fairy rings and the old ways of her ancestors, used to tell him never to go too far into the woods, but Derry didn’t have fairy rings. Derry just had—

Well, Derry had _something_, but whatever it was, it wasn’t there now. Otherwise Sean wouldn’t have gone this far, not with his mother’s warnings about things best left undisturbed, not with his father once telling him, _there’s something cursed about this town, so be careful._ But he didn’t have to be careful now, he figured.

Leaves and twigs crunched and cracked under the soles of his boots. He stepped into a clearing and looked around, and grinned. “Mighty fine day today, folks,” he murmured to himself, in his best Southern drawl. The Scottish still poked through, a consequence of spending half his childhood with his mother in Scotland after his parents got divorced, but he figured he did a passable enough job.

He sat down on a convenient rock, and looked up. The afternoon sun was peeking through the canopy, and the scene in front of him seemed almost like a storybook illustration: beams of autumn sunlight, streaming down to the forest floor. He almost expected an ethereal woman to walk out of the trees, although if she did, he’d have turned and fled. One did not fuck with the gentle folk.

Thankfully, there was no ethereal woman. Sean sketched her in anyway, picturing some actress he’d seen in that old movie, what was it, _The Black Rapids_? Something based off a William Denbrough novel, anyway. Man was having a Moment, this year, what with _The Attic Room_ coming out soon and _Homecoming Queen_ getting an adaptation. Jonny liked horror, might be Sean could preorder tickets to _Attic Room_ and cuddle his boyfriend during the terrifying parts.

He didn’t hear the sound of someone stepping on the leaves. He didn’t even hear a breath, a whisper, anything that could indicate that anyone else was there. He only felt a prickle along the back of his neck before he looked up and sucked in a horrified breath.

There was a man stepping through the trees. He _looked_ like a man, anyway, if one who was somewhat underfed, but his eyes seemed—strange, like they couldn’t settle on a color for very long. One minute they seemed an eerie gold, the next they were blue. He was looking down, prodding the ground with his foot, as if looking for some secret trap door. And there was—

There was a gaping hole through the man’s chest. He was _still bleeding_, sluggishly. And his _face_, god—splotches of white makeup decorated his pale skin like bruises, and Sean could swear he could see, for just the briefest of moments, the outline of two red lines below the man’s strange, sunken eyes. Something about the man—Sean wanted to run, but his legs were locked up, his pencil falling from nerveless fingers.

The man looked up, and blinked at him. Glasses. Cracked glasses. What sort of monster needed glasses to see? The man smiled, slowly, like a predator that had just found injured prey, and cocked his head to the side.

“**_well, well, well, what have we here? don’t you know you shouldn’t walk into the woods, young man?_**” the man said, stepping forward. “**_you don’t know what’s waiting for_—oh my fucking god, no.**” Then he froze, and the gold in his eyes flickered away. “Shit,” he said, and his voice was _different_, more human, a little nasal-sounding and imperfect. The smile had disappeared, the lazy grace of a predator had gone, and all that was left was a weirdly tall, kinda awkward guy who still had a fucking _hole_ in his chest. “Shit, no, fuck, I’m sorry, man.”

“It,” Sean managed, staring at the hole in the guy’s chest and trying to process what the everliving _fuck_ was happening in front of him. “It’s fine?”

“It’s not fucking fine,” the man snapped. “Get the fuck out of here.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Sean said, forgetting to be afraid. Fuck, why was he scared of this guy in the first place? He was just some lanky dumbass. _With a goddamn hole in his chest,_ some part of Sean pointed out, _so, uh, probably a zombie._ “Hey, shithead, I got here _first_.”

“It doesn’t care about who got here first, kid,” said the man, scratching violently at his wrists, enough that Sean saw him bleeding a little more. With every scratch, though, white paint peeled away. “You gotta go. I’m—It’s fucking starving, and I can taste your fear from here, and I’m telling you, if you’re not gone in the next twenty seconds I can’t guarantee you’ll make it out of the Barrens alive.”

Sean’s blood ran cold. “You’re joking,” he said.

“If I was joking, I’d be talking about eating your mom out,” said the man, peeved. “I’m not. You need to _go_, you’re not safe here.”

Sean stared at him, and thought, wildly and nonsensically, _This is Tam fucking Lin all over again._ “Listen, man, I don’t want any trouble,” he said, his Scottish brogue blurring the words together as he stood. He tugged off his jacket, tossed it to the ground at the man’s feet, and said, “I know how this shit goes, here’s your tribute, leave me alone—”

“**_what kind of story do you think this is?_**” the man said, in that horrible, awful scraping voice again. “**_i think i’ll have that pound of flesh instead._**” Then he shook his head. “**I said** you need to fucking _run_,” he said, dragging every word out from behind his teeth like it was taking every bit of strength he had to stay _still_, to not _move_. His shape was starting to change, going from a lanky, weird, too-pale white guy to something else, something thinner and sharper. “You have to go. I don’t care about your tribute but you need to fucking leave.”

“But—”

“_Now_,” the man all but screamed, the howl of a banshee, and Sean booked it the fuck out of the Barrens.

He didn’t look back until he’d crossed the river.

\--

“Fuck,” breathes Eddie, after Sean finishes his story, and his drink. Richie had been acting strangely, a couple days ago, had asked that Eddie check the papers and Mike’s old police scanner for any missing people lately, but he hadn’t told him why. Now he knows. Or at least he has some idea. “That’s…”

“You don’t believe me,” says Sean.

“I believe you,” says Eddie. “I do. Can you—What else did you notice about him?”

Sean raises his eyebrows. “Besides the gaping hole in his chest that he should’ve been dead from?” he asks. “Ugh. I don’t know. Uh, he seemed a bit familiar?”

_Because he’s a missing comedian,_ Eddie doesn’t say. “And you—tossed your jacket at him?” he asks instead. “Why?”

“That’s how it works in my mother’s stories,” says Sean. “You give the Sìth a tribute, and they leave you be. And this guy, he just—he gave me that vibe, for a moment? Of someone up there with the Sìth, just more terrifying.” He scratches at his cheek, and says, “But he said something about it not being that kind of story.”

Since when has Pennywise cared about stories? Although—it must be something to do with Sean’s fear. Eddie sips at his lemonade, and says, “What are the—uh—”

“Sìth,” Sean says, saying the word slower so Eddie can repeat after him, trying to familiarize himself with it. “They’re fairies, essentially. Or—well, we understand them in the modern day as fairies, but they’re more complicated than Tinkerbell waving a wee little wand. More terrifying, too.” He huffs out a breath. “But they play by rules. This guy, I don’t know, he didn’t make any sense to me. He was talking to himself, and if it wasn’t for the—the way his shape was changing, I think I would’ve just called the police on him, gotten them to take him to Juniper Hill.”

“Thank god you didn’t,” Eddie mutters, because, well, _really_. He’s heard horror stories about the asylum Henry Bowers broke out of, he does not want to imagine what it would look like if Richie, possessed by the ghost of It, got dragged there. If he even could be dragged anywhere. As long as he’s in Derry, as long as the sewers are available to him, Eddie’s pretty sure Richie would slip away fast from the asylum, but it’d take a toll. “Hey, uh—do you mind if I left my contact number with you? For follow-up questions.”

“Oh, no, I don’t,” says Sean, brows scrunching together in confusion. “This is the weirdest context I’ve ever gotten a guy’s number in, but sure.”

They swap phone numbers, after that, and by the time the rain clears, Eddie has a new number in his phone, some leads on where to start, and a new worry worming its way under his skin. _Richie,_ he thinks, thumb rubbing over the arcade token hanging around his neck like a talisman, _tell me what’s wrong. I can’t help if you don’t tell me._

No response. Probably should’ve said it out loud, now that he thinks about it.

“Richie,” he says, softly, when he steps out into the sunlight, kicking a pebble into the sewer to get Richie’s attention, “we really gotta talk, man. Meet up with me in the townhouse basement?”

Still no answer, but Eddie sees a glint of light in the darkness.

“I’ll take that as a nod,” says Eddie.

\--

Eddie’s halfway back to the townhouse when he realizes that someone’s following him. A glance at a general store window confirms his suspicions: two guys, one who looks like he’s barely out of high school and another who’s definitely older, casually trying to seem like they’re not watching Eddie like hawks. A cold stone of dread drops right into Eddie’s gut.

There are dangers outside the sewers.

Eddie kicks a pebble into a storm drain and mutters, “Rich, I’m being followed,” and hopes to god he didn’t just accidentally doom a couple of people. Then he thinks, _it’s Richie, he’d never._

But then Richie would do a lot of things for the people he loves. Richie would swing a baseball bat at a clown’s head for Bill, would put an axe through a crazed man’s head for Mike, would _die_ for Eddie and for the rest of them. For himself Richie might never. For them? Eddie has empirical evidence Richie would definitely murder a guy.

Shit.

Eddie turns a corner onto a less crowded street, hearing the sound of footsteps coming closer, and he hears Richie’s voice from the shadows of an alleyway: “Eds? Get behind me.”

“You gonna fight them with your fucking jokes?” Eddie mutters, but he ducks into the alleyway anyway despite his instincts screaming at him not to do something so horror-movie _stupid_. “Gonna tell them you fucked their moms?”

Richie absently hums. In the dim light, it’s hard to see him, but Eddie steps behind him and sees white paint blooming on his neck. Shit.

The guys duck into the alleyway after Eddie, clearly intent on him, slipping brass knuckles out of their pockets. Eddie swallows, his hand slipping into his jacket pocket for the can of mace he carries around. He doesn’t like his odds against these guys, but if he’s faced down a killer clown he figures he can get away mostly unscathed from this if he times the spray right, gets one in the eyes.

Richie steps forward. Eddie catches sight of sharp teeth, blue eyes shifting to sinister, sickly yellow. “Afternoon, boys,” he says, his voice sounding out of place with his zombie-like appearance, with his mouth splitting into a horrible smile. “Why don’t you good folk of Derry **run along _home now, hm? unless you’re out here cruising for a good time, same as me._**” A horrible, sick giggle issues from past his lips, and he says, sing-song, spitting blood at their feet and shambling closer, clothes turning ragged and dripping blood and river water, “**_anything else you wanna take off for me tonight, ladies?_**”

The two guys step back, both looking utterly horrified. “Oh, Jesus fucking Christ,” says the kid. “We gotta go, we gotta _go_, he’ll—”

“I’m not fucking _scared of you_,” the older guy snaps, but he looks absolutely terrified.

Eddie looks at Richie’s back, then at the two guys. Then he says, coldly furious, “Why don’t you two _dumb fucks_ go back to the hellhole you crawled out of and leave me the fuck alone? Because I can guarantee you that if you step any closer, someone’s gonna get fucked up and _it sure as shit won’t be me._”

The kid looks at Richie, and his eyes go horribly, terribly wide. “Fuck this shit,” he says, grabbing hold of his buddy’s arm, “we gotta—we gotta _go_, man, this isn’t worth it—”

Richie very nearly _pounces_, with only Eddie’s hand grabbing his elbow keeping him back from—fuck, from jumping the older guy, who screams in horror and jumps back. “I said _go_,” Eddie snaps, his heart pounding in his chest like a drum. Oh god. “If I see you both again I’m fucking calling the cops!”

The guys skedaddle, and Richie—not Richie, not right now, _It_ tries to go after them, roaring as it struggles against Eddie’s grip, losing the shape it had started to shift into: a beaten-up, waterlogged corpse. Eddie yanks it back into the alleyway, away from the two assholes running further away, and says, “Rich, Richie, _Richie_, hey, hey, _hey_, they’re gone, I’m okay.”

Golden eyes flicker back to blue, the corpse slowly shifting back, starting from where Eddie’s gripping his arm tight. “**what the fuck** did I do, Eds?” Richie asks, his voice losing the horrible, scraping quality more and more with every word, until he sounds like himself again. Until he looks like himself again, not halfway to a portrait hanging in the Falcon in memoriam. “Did I—”

“No, you just scared them off,” says Eddie, finally able to relax. God. Fuck. For a moment there he had honestly thought he would have to watch Richie actually kill and eat someone, and fuck, the guy might’ve been awful enough to at least warrant a good whack in the head, but cannibalism is not something Eddie needs on Richie’s conscience. Or on Eddie’s watch, either. “It’s fine, Richie, it’s okay. Hey, hey,” he says, “look at me.”

Blue eyes blink down at Eddie. It’s strange, but Richie looks—less pale, less like a corpse, when Eddie is holding him. More and more like himself, before he went into Neibolt for the last time. “Eddie,” says Richie, softly, and Eddie’s breath catches on a hook in his throat because, god, the last time he heard Richie say his name like that—

The last time he heard Richie say his name like that, Richie’d just been impaled. The last time he heard Richie say his name like that, Richie had told him he loved him. The last time, Richie had _died_, and it had taken Mike and Ben’s combined strengths to drag Eddie away from his body.

“I have to go,” says Richie, now, his voice cracking, gold flecks in his eyes.

“You don’t have to,” says Eddie.

“I do,” says Richie, then, “I’m _sorry_.” He pulls away, then, and from one step to the other, the color leaches back out of his skin. He turns to walk away, and Eddie tries to run forward, to sprint after him and catch him by his jacket, but Richie turns a corner and disappears.

“You _fucker,_” Eddie hisses at nothing in particular. “Stop fucking _leaving!_ Goddammit, Richie, you asshole, you better be at the townhouse or I swear to god I will jump into the sewers to _haul your ass there._”

There’s no response, not even It trying to taunt him.

God fucking _damn it._


	6. you feel like breathing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Rosi Golan's "Come Around".
> 
> **content warnings:** some abuse denial from Eddie about how bad he had it compared to Bev, and therefore some touching on child abuse. (the author maintains that both Eddie’s mom and Bev’s dad were Terrible Parents equally, just different flavors.) some spoilers for Duma Key.

Richie means to stay away from the townhouse, he really does. Whenever shit like that happens, whenever he almost lets It push him out of the driver’s seat and shift him into a different form, it takes a whole lot of effort to run somewhere safe and let it run its course. He’s still, nominally and usually, the one in charge of his body, and he usually can hide himself away from everyone else and push the shifting back, but—it’s a lot of effort. It’s exhausting. The last thing he needs to do after all that is go to Eddie, weak and tired and unstable.

But he hears the sound of music, drifting through the sewers like a siren’s call. _I was beat incomplete, I’ve been had, I was sad and blue, but you made me feel, yeah you made me feel shiny and new—_

“Holy fuck, he kept it,” Richie says out loud, because he knows the lyrics to “Like A Virgin” even now, twenty-seven years later, and he remembers the mixtape. He remembers the days he spent agonizing over which songs he could play off as a joke, over which songs would be perfect for Eddie, over which songs he could use to confess to if he ever wanted to, if he ever had enough courage to try. For the longest time after Derry he’d felt all hollowed out when Madonna came on, and he’d never known why until he came back here and saw Eddie again, beautiful as always.

And now Eddie’s playing the mixtape.

Richie gets to the townhouse in almost no time at all, emerging from the sewers into the basement to find Eddie setting up a lamp and some books. A boombox sits off to the side, loudly blaring Madonna singing, _Like a virgin, when your heart beats next to mine!_

“Took you long enough to get here,” says Eddie with a huff, crossing his arms.

“You kept it,” Richie blurts.

“Oh,” says Eddie. “Yeah.” He looks down, toe scuffing the basement floor, and Richie’s dead heart aches with just how much he loves this man. “I used to listen to your mixtape a lot, you know? I always felt a little happier, whenever I did, even when I didn’t remember.” He huffs out a breath, says, “And Myra wanted to keep it, Jesus.”

“Fuck her,” says Richie, and the vehemence in his voice surprises even him. He says, softer, “It’s your shit, dude. I gave it to you, not her, not anyone else.”

“Yeah, I know,” says Eddie. “I think—she didn’t even want it? But she’s angry and she wants to keep everything she can.” He lets out a breath, and sits down now beside a small stack of books, pulling a binder on top of the stack off. “She’s already got New York, though,” he murmurs to himself.

Richie should leave. Should go. It isn’t safe for him to be around Eddie like this, not with It lurking in his head, hungry for the taste of flesh, seasoned by fear.

He sits next to him, instead. “You loved that city,” he says.

“It’s New York, you never really stop,” says Eddie. “Yeah, it’s overrated and the traffic is horrible, but—I loved it anyway. And then. Well.” He shrugs. “She can have New York,” he says. “The brownstone we lived in, the skyline, the traffic, the little café I used to visit all the time with their gluten-free menu options, she can have all that now. I don’t know if I can be there without suffocating anymore.”

“Doesn’t that leave you with Derry?” Richie asks.

“It leaves me with literally everywhere else in America, dumbass,” says Eddie, swatting his shoulder and opening the binder. “Anyway, I need you to see the number of missing people, lately.”

Dread, heavy and cold, drops into Richie’s stomach. “Did I—”

“You didn’t, Rich,” says Eddie, flipping to a page that reads _Missing Persons_. There are two names on it, connected by a bracket that leads to the words _eloped to Vegas_. “The only missing persons reports that were filed after Its death were for a couple who later sent a postcard from Vegas. You haven’t done anything. You certainly didn’t kill a kid who stumbled on you in the woods.”

Richie sucks in a breath. “How’d you know about the kid?” he asks. He remembers—_hunting_ someone through the woods, remembers the hot spray of blood on his skin, blood staining some poor kid’s jacket a horrible red. He hadn’t been sure if it was real or not, had—had _hoped_ it wasn’t, but hadn’t been sure. With It in his head, he’s never completely sure anymore.

“Because I ran into him today while at the Falcon,” says Eddie.

“You,” says Richie, slowly, “went to the _Falcon_?”

“Shut up, it was pissing down rain, the Falcon was the nearest place with a roof, and I only exchanged numbers with the kid for follow-up questions,” says Eddie. “I didn’t even get drunk, I just had a lemonade.”

“No, no, that’s not what I’m surprised about,” says Richie, leaning back onto his palms. “I just—you went into the Falcon and you didn’t walk out immediately. I thought…” He trails off, running his teeth over his lower lip and looking down at his kneecaps. “The place is a dive bar, you didn’t scrub your hands raw after you touched the counter?”

“I washed my hands when I got back here,” says Eddie, and there he is. “And—well. After.” He fiddles with the strap of his watch, fingers rubbing over the edges of it. “Thanks,” he says, after a moment. “For coming when I called you. Then and right now. And I’m—sorry.”

Richie shakes his head. “What, for calling on my help ‘cause some shitheads were following you?” he asks. “That’s not something to be sorry about.”

“No, I just—” Eddie starts, then he pauses. “It pushed you pretty far,” he says. “And I’m the one who gave it the chance.”

A chill runs down Richie’s spine at the memory. He had been _furious_, coldly so, the same kind of fury that had propelled him to grab a tomahawk and slam it into the back of Bowers’ head. When he’d managed to swim back up from under it, the sight of Bowers’ dead body had been less unsettling than the fact that it was _Richie_ who killed him, than the fact that all he really felt was glad Mike was okay. He is well fucking aware that had Eddie not dragged him back, he’d have done the same to those two chucklefucks, if not worse.

Is there—Is this something _intrinsic_, in Richie? Had there always been the potential to be a monster, deep in him, and It’s only pushing it out more and more? Richie’s always known he’s the type to keep secrets. Is this one he managed to keep even from himself, this capacity for murder? And even if it’s for the people he loves, with It in the back of his head, how long does he have until that love goes sour, gets poisoned?

“You _didn’t_,” he says, wrenching his thoughts away from that train. “Shit, Eddie, it’s not a bad thing to ask for help when people are stalking you. If anything _I_ let It push me, I was just so fucking furious.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t _thinking_—”

Ben had been wary when Richie had talked to him and Eddie from the sewers. Had pointed out that if it was him and Bev in their positions, Ben in Richie’s and Bev in Eddie’s, he wouldn’t want Bev near. But Richie isn’t Ben, Richie doesn’t have Ben’s good heart and radiant kindness. Maybe that’s why It’s possessed him.

“Eds,” says Richie, scooting closer despite his instincts yelling at him to stay the fuck away from Eddie, “I would rather get pushed than see you die.” He pauses. “Fucked-up thing to say, I know,” he says, tiredly, “but—I mean, I died to keep you alive. It’d be a waste of effort if you went and died on me.”

“Be a waste of my effort,” Eddie says, “if you got pushed too far.” His hand reaches out and touches Richie’s, and Richie involuntarily sucks in a breath that he doesn’t really need. In the dark, it’s hard to tell how long it’s been since someone just—held his hand like this, beyond just a brief, fleeting touch. That’s all he usually allows himself, because god knows what It might do to someone who dared hold on to him, but Eddie’s hand on his could almost restart his heart singlehandedly.

_or you could **hurt him.**_

Richie pulls his hand away, after a moment. “Well, I don’t wanna waste either of our efforts,” he says, forcing his voice to remain casual.

“Yeah, that would fucking suck, wouldn’t it,” says Eddie. “Rich?”

“Mm?”

“You know I’d keep you from going that far, right?” Eddie asks. “I’d be a pretty shitty—_something_ if I did.”

_Something_, he says, like they’ve moved away from friendship into something else entirely. And they have, is the thing, Richie confessed his love in his last breaths and Eddie moved all the way back to Derry to get him back, said the word _dates_ without tripping over it while talking about their meetings. But they’re not quite lovers, not in the physical sense. They’re definitely not married. “Is the word you’re looking for _boyfriend_, or…” he starts, unsure.

Eddie stares at him, looking gobsmacked for a moment. “So help me Rich, if this is a joke—”

“It’s a serious question!” says Richie.

“Oh,” says Eddie. “Well. Yes, if that’s what you want to call it. If you’re okay with that.”

Jesus fucking Christ, he had to die before he got a boyfriend. “I’m okay with that,” Richie says, feeling something fluttering about in his stomach, trapped in his intestines. “Just—don’t die, yeah? That’d fuck me up like nothing else.” Sometimes he still dreams of the Deadlights’ first horrible vision, the claw jutting out of Eddie’s chest, so he knows for a fact that if Eddie were to die, Richie would likely just lose it. Would let It take him over, sink under and die for good. “Please,” he adds, softly.

“I’ll do my best not to die,” Eddie solemnly says.

“And I’ll do my best not to start eating people,” says Richie. He pauses, then huffs out a mirthless laugh that echoes oddly around the basement. “God, we have some real fucking low standards, don’t we?”

“We live in Derry, the place finds ways to fall short of the lowest standards,” Eddie points out, which, true. Still. Richie hopes to god he won’t be one of them.

**_sure about that, richie? sure you can live up to this promise? you didn’t want to live up to the first one you made, after all._** (A replay: _so let’s un-make it, we don’t owe this town shit!_)

“I need to go,” says Richie, standing up and dusting his jacket off as best as he can, stepping away before Eddie can reach for his hand again. Months of living in the sewers have permanently fucked this leather jacket up, turned it all discolored and worn and dirty. No amount of cleaning Richie can do is going to make it look anything like it had before he walked into the house on Neibolt Street. “But I’ll—I’ll see you soon, Eddie.”

“Yeah?” Eddie asks.

Richie smiles, reassuring. “Promise,” he says, and means it.

\--

When Eddie’s mother died, he had her cremated, her ashes interred in a mausoleum somewhere in New York City that was kept so clean it was nearly spotless. She had said something about wanting him to keep her on the fireplace mantle, but Eddie hadn’t wanted her to be watching over him in death, so he’d gone against that final wish and given her a mausoleum, far out of his way, in a lovely cemetery that prided itself on its cleanliness and care. He hadn’t visited her in quite a while.

When Eddie’s father died, Sonia Kaspbrak had had him buried in a lovely cemetery in Derry, and then proceeded to never visit it at all. So, hey, maybe the apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Still. Due diligence, and all that. When the man’s death anniversary comes around, Eddie decides, fuck it, and drives down from the townhouse to Derry’s cemetery. It takes him some time to find Frank Kaspbrak’s gravestone, and he’s a little dismayed to find that it’s somewhat overgrown, dwarfed by the newer, grander gravestones around it. He doesn’t remember much about his father, the man had died when he was young, but he remembers Frank had been kind, and caring. He gave warm hugs. He deserves a nicer grave than this, a better son than Eddie, better than what he got in the end.

Eddie cleans the gravestone up, as best as he can. He pulls the weeds and brushes the dirt off, because—well, someone has to, and it’s not as if the groundskeeper is doing his job well enough. Then he sits on the ground and says, somewhat awkwardly, “Uh, hey, Dad. Sorry I only visited you just now. A lot’s happened.”

No answer. Not every dead person in Derry, Eddie supposes, can answer him from the sewers when he asks them something.

He doesn’t really bother to try and catch his father up on what’s happened. There’s too much to go over, for a start, and Eddie just—wants to do this for some peace of mind. Like if he finally visits his father, he’ll make up for being kind of a shitty son to his mom, and a shitty husband to his wife. (He knows what the other Losers might say to that, knows what _Richie_ would say, but fuck, it was never as bad as Bev. It was bad, he can acknowledge that much now, but never that bad.)

Nothing happens. No big shift in Eddie’s soul, no sudden clarity in his mind, nothing.

But at least his father’s grave looks cleaner, and sometimes something small is really all he can do, he supposes. He pats the cold stone, like his father will somehow feel something, dead in the ground though he is, and then stands and walks away. He feels...lighter, weirdly. Not like how a good son should feel, he’s probably too late for that, but just—a little bit better for the visit.

Then he walks by the Toziers’ graves, and his heart cracks a little.

There’s no one there, either. And there are really only two graves: Maggie’s and Wentworth’s, because they’d wanted to be buried together, Eddie remembers Richie telling him about that, when they were sixteen and Wentworth had gotten a diagnosis, they had to move out from Derry to somewhere better, somewhere he could get treatment. He doesn’t know what happened after they moved away, if Maggie lasted any longer than her husband or if she followed him soon after into the grave.

Richie doesn’t have a grave. Richie’s still legally missing. Richie’s body had been buried underneath Neibolt when it collapsed, and it strikes Eddie as profoundly unfair, even without the possession being taken into account. Richie’s never struck him as someone who would’ve liked being buried in the dark, has always been bright and loud and reckless in his memory.

(_we can’t leave him down here without his glasses richie RICHIE—_)

They shouldn’t have left him down there in the darkness.

Eddie stands at the two graves. “We’ll get him back,” he says, softly, before he turns away and walks back to his car.

He drives to the library, and goes to work. He hadn’t been kidding when he told Richie they were managing on a budget that _barely_ qualified as shoestring, but Cathy’s proposal has gone through and they’re due for some funds being diverted their way in the next few weeks, hopefully. In the meantime, one of the interns had the surprisingly bright idea of holding a fundraiser, in the form of a bake sale.

The great thing about being de facto head of Financial Services, Eddie’s found, is that he can _delegate_. He can trust like, two other people below him not to fuck it up, so he entrusts them with planning the bake sale and how to market it and goes back to shouting down the phone at the repair company.

“—leave this shit half-assed!” he’s yelling down the phone as one of the interns walks over, the little teenaged girl who barely knows anything about Excel. “Yes, we _are_ going to pay, there’s no question about that, but we are not going to pay you for the days you spent _not doing any repairs_—no! Absolutely not! We hired you to do repairs, we’ll pay you when the job is done! And the job isn’t _fucking done_ if I still have to walk past fucking knife marks in the walls every day!” He blinks at her and says, “I’m gonna have to call you back with the breakdown, I’ve got shit to do.”

The intern very audibly gulps, clutching a file to her chest. “Hi,” she squeaks.

“What do you want,” says Eddie, flatly.

“J-Just—there’s, um, there’s a package for you?” the girl stammers. “F-From Atlanta. I think. It’s, uh, it’s some guy named Stanley Uris, I think. I, I was wondering if—”

“I know who Stan is,” says Eddie, putting the phone down. “Is there a note or something attached?”

“He just—um, he only wrote your name,” says the girl. “And a note that it’s only for you? I, um, I didn’t touch it! Nobody did, it was, um, super weird. Do you—Do you trust this Stanley guy, Mr. Kaspbrak? Because none of us’ve ever heard of him.”

“With my life,” Eddie says, and means it. Stan is one of his best friends, one of his _first_ friends. “Besides, I’ve been waiting for this package.” He pats the girl on the shoulder, because—that’s something bosses do, right? He’s not really entirely sure, but his old boss used to do this sometimes.

The girl makes a noise like she’s just seen the clown pop out from nowhere, and runs out the door fast. Eddie turns around, scanning for Richie’s glasses, or some other trace of Richie that’d explain her just fleeing the scene immediately, but sees pretty much nothing.

Huh. Weird.

He heads over to the front desk. They have, technically, a mail room in the library, but Bowers broke in there because—well, only It (and probably Richie) knows why Bowers did anything he did. The mail room’s just fucked now, having been the victim of Bowers’ petty rampage, so any packages meant for the library have just been piling up at the front desk till Cathy, or somebody from Archival, can take a look at them. Except this one.

It’s an unassuming package wrapped in brown paper and twine. The most notable thing about it is that it’s neat, the paper folded precisely over the contents to the point where Eddie fancies the could probably poke someone’s eye out with a corner. The twine is very carefully tied, not too tightly but not too loosely, just _right_. Definitely Stan, then.

“You know this Stanley fella, then, Mr. Kaspbrak?” the guy at the front desk asks—Jeff, Eddie thinks his name is.

“He’s one of my best friends,” says Eddie. “I’ve been waiting on some news from him for a while now, I’m glad he’s finally sent me something.” He grabs the package, takes note: it’s a rectangular shape, not very thick, so—maybe Stan did find some occult thing in Atlanta. How it can help here, Eddie’s not sure, but they’re in uncharted territory, he’ll take all the help he can get.

Mike’s old occult collection is in the basement, as Cathy said, although Eddie’s been moving some of them out for home study. And because he’s not such a huge fan of Derry basements, hasn’t been for a while. Ben once mentioned It had scared him down here, invaded Ben’s safe space with a headless boy and tried to kill him there, and as Eddie steps through the doorway into a realm of barely-organized shelves under dim light, he half-expects to see the shattered shell of a smoking egg under his heel. When he turns, he wonders if he’ll see a headless boy, too, or the leper, or his mother. Or Richie, changed, face covered in white.

He doesn’t see anything.

The strange thing is that he doesn’t feel as relieved about that as he should be. After all, if Richie’s not trying to scare the shit out of him, that means he’s still _Richie_.

“Christ, Eds,” he mutters to himself. “Stop it, you’re forty, you can handle not talking to—to Richie like an adult. Besides, he’s fine, he’s probably—trying to contact Bill, or something.” Although Bill being in England probably complicates that. “Maybe Bev,” he continues.

Recently, Mike had set up a table and some audiovisual equipment down here, for researchers to use as they saw fit, with a table-lamp so they’d be able to read even in the basement’s chronically dim light. Eddie takes a few steps in the table’s direction when he hears—something. An indistinct whisper, a rustle of fabric, a footstep.

Eddie turns, and sees a leather jacket disappearing around the corner. “Rich?” he calls, softly, turning to follow Richie. “Hey, Rich?”

Richie doesn’t answer, not even when Eddie reaches another turn. There’s no flutter of a leather jacket, no footsteps, no smoking egg—

—but there is a red rose on the table, when Eddie finally makes it back. Beautiful and red, freshly-picked and clean of thorns.

“Did you distract me to surprise me with a fucking rose?” Eddie asks. “That’s—honestly sweet of you, Rich.” He used to try and surprise Myra, with roses and flowers and cruises, but they were always to placate her when she was upset, always to try and restore some sort of equilibrium in the status quo when one of them had upset it. She’d never really done the same for him, either. Maybe the closest she got was buying two tickets to plays she wanted to see and he was curious about, but he never got roses from her.

Weird fucking thing to be upset over, true. But there was a lot either of them didn’t get from each other.

“Thanks,” Eddie says now, fingers tracing delicately over the petals, marveling over their deep red color. “I’m putting this in a vase at the townhouse.”

A soft chuckle on the wind reaches Eddie’s ears, and he smiles softly down at the rose before he tucks it away.

\--

The book Stan sends him is one about ghosts, and how to drive them out. It’s—not the most helpful book there is, because Eddie doesn’t have the requirements for any of the major religious rituals listed, and the ingredients for many of the less religious and more witchy one’s are a little too exotic for Eddie to get. At least one of them is an illegal drug, he’s pretty sure.

(He does try one, but:

“Well,” says Richie in the salt circle, as Eddie grumbles thunderously and grabs a broom to sweep up the dismal failure of the ritual, “I mean, you tried. I appreciate the effort.”

“It wasn’t enough!”

“Eds, my man,” says Richie, leaning on his palms, looking a little more human today, “it’s helping. Okay? You’re helping. That’s enough for me.”)

“Can Catholic priests exercise demonic alien clown ghosts?” Eddie asks Mike over the phone, when Mike calls in to check on him. “Just, hypothetical question here.”

“Yeah, hi, Eddie,” says Mike, “no, I’m pretty sure Pennywise falls out of Catholic jurisdiction. Or—any religion’s jurisdiction for that matter.” Or any tribe’s. “How’re you and Richie?”

“Some days are better than others,” Eddie admits. Today is not one of them, It had pushed into a conversation they were having in the bathroom, breaking the Harrison Ford Voice Richie was doing to make Eddie laugh. “He’s not really talking to me right now.” It’s something Richie does—isolate himself the second It manages to slip past his guard, no matter how much Eddie tries to get him to come back. He does come back, sometimes, but it takes hours, even days, and every time he does there’s always something _off_ at first. Like he’s trying desperately to remember what it’s like to be Richie Tozier, plain and simple, and not Richie-possessed-by-Pennywise.

_What is It doing to you, Richie? Let me help. Maybe I’m useless when it comes to exorcism but I can hold you, and maybe that’s enough._

Or maybe not.

“Will he come if you call him?” Mike asks.

“Usually he does,” says Eddie, looking down at the sinkhole where the house on Neibolt Street used to be. Ben’s not wrong. Eddie might be safety-conscious, might be a risk analyst, might still be wrestling with the bone-deep terror of being alive by himself for the very first time in his life since he was thirteen, but sometimes he very strongly considers doing something deeply ill-advised. Like cutting through the safety fence and climbing down into the sinkhole. “Sometimes it’s a crapshoot, though. Hey, quick hypothetical, do you think Richie’s still in the cistern under Neibolt Street or what?”

“...are you on Neibolt Street right now.”

“Maybe?” Eddie says.

Mike disconnects. A couple of minutes later, Eddie’s suddenly invited to a group phone call, and he squints at it for a long moment before swiping to accept.

“_Are you fucking kidding me,_” Stan shouts over the phone.

“We have really,” says Ben, “got to stop walking into the house that traumatized us all as children. Especially since it doesn’t even _exist_ anymore.”

“I don’t know if this is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard or the dumbest,” says Bev. “But don’t—don’t go into the _sinkhole_, Eddie.”

“I’m not going into the sinkhole right _now_,” Eddie argues, even though he’s up near the fence. “I’d need safety equipment and shit and someone on the outside first, I’m not a complete dumbass.”

“_Why_ were you planning to go into the s-s-s-sinkhole?” Bill asks.

“Its lair is probably still down there,” Eddie points out.

“Its lair is fucked to hell and back,” says Mike, “so I don’t think Richie’s staying there anymore.” Which, well, fuck, he’s right about that. Richie would likely avoid the holy hell out of the well house, after all he’s been through under it.

“But he isn’t just traveling through the sewers all day,” Eddie reasons. “There’s gotta be a place he uses as a base.”

“Somewhere he thinks is safe,” Mike says. “It went somewhere it knew no one would come. Maybe Richie’s working on similar logic—he goes somewhere that’s safe to him.”

Somewhere that’s safe. Not the Toziers’ house, Richie’s parents weren’t always there, were always too busy as Richie grew up. Certainly not the high school, or their old haunt at the ice cream parlor. Not Richie’s mother’s old shop, where they used to play when they were just five or six years old, when they were kids who thought their parents would love them right and the future was a bright, sprawling thing in front of them, waiting for their footprints. Not the Capitol, Bowers had chased Richie out of there once.

And then it clicks.

“The clubhouse,” Eddie says, around the same time as Bev says, “He’d be at the _clubhouse_.”

“Really?” Ben asks, surprised.

“It was still standing when we went there,” Eddie points out, “and props to you at thirteen for somehow building an underground clubhouse that’s lasted twenty-seven years without collapsing in on itself, but—we always felt safe there.” Because Ben had built it with love and care, had built it knowing in his heart that it would be a shelter for the Losers. Of course Richie would go there. Of course Richie would make it his home base. _Home is where you go when you have nowhere left to run,_ Eddie thinks, _where you go when all other doors are closed to you, where you go and the memories chain you down. Or set you free._

“Why d’you need to find him, anyway?” Ben asks.

“I have his lunch,” Eddie explains.

“What,” says Stan.

“Oh, you’re gonna hate this, Stan,” says Ben, before launching into an explanation.

“Yeah, I hate this,” says Stan, “but also I actually get it. Did the book I sent you work?”

“Nope,” says Eddie, thinking, _they didn’t have that magic, I didn’t believe in them._ Lapsed Catholicism can really fuck with someone’s belief in witchy rituals, he supposes. “But Richie said he appreciated it anyway.” Which is true, Richie had laid down on a sandy beach in their weird dreamspace that night and said, _Tell Stanley thanks for trying anyway. Even if it didn’t work. It’s the thought that counts and all._ Then he’d leaned over and brushed Eddie’s hair out of his face and smiled, that impish little smirk that said he knew something Eddie didn’t, and they’d wrestled in the sand a while like the kids they used to be, thirteen and rolling on the carpet.

Eddie’s face is warm, at the memory. _Boyfriends,_ he thinks. No, that’s wrong, that doesn’t quite fit them. _Lovers,_ that’s a better word, a letter away from _Losers_, a V in red sharpie scrawled over an S in black.

If only he could say it back.

“Oh, if he appreciates it,” says Stan.

“Tell him we’re lll-luh-looking,” says Bill, the last tendrils of sleep bringing out the stutter. “Just hang in th-there, we’ve found some leads.”

“I found some news articles about something in Florida that could be related,” says Mike. “Bill’s coming over, we’re going to check out Duma Key.”

Eddie goes up on his tiptoes, the better to see the sinkhole, the downward slope of it. Duma Key—home of some one-armed artist who does surrealist sunsets, he thinks. Myra used to go wild for them, and had tried to pester Eddie into picking up a painting or two. For his part, Eddie never liked those sunsets. Something about them put him on edge, something about them sent a shiver down his spine, but he could never quite explain to Myra why he let Jacob Farman from HR gobble them up instead. She’d probably have clucked her tongue and recommended he go talk to someone over that, _paintings are supposed to evoke feelings, but if you feel so upset over them…_

Well, here’s the proof, he thinks, beyond Jacob Farman suddenly losing it after buying the damn things and being arrested for murdering his ex-wife’s boyfriend. Mike and Bill wouldn’t be heading to Duma Key if there’s truly nothing there. “Be careful,” he says. “That’s pretty uninhabited, right?”

“Not really, but close to it,” says Mike. “And there’s rumors flying around.”

“In the meantime,” Bev says, “be _careful_. You especially, Eddie. Mike, Bill, do you need anything? Ben and I can take the yacht to Florida, take you guys where you need to go.”

“I’ve been to Duma Key before,” Ben adds. “Good view, a little too overgrown and too tied up in lawsuits over much of the ownership. But I know the place well enough.”

Eddie figures he might know the place, too, if he ever set foot on it. Maybe he’s never been, but all his life he’s been good at finding his way around places. But—he has to stay here, in Derry, because someone has to. Someone needs to. Richie is here, tethering him to Derry, Richie needs someone to stay _here_, because if not then they’ll lose him. Eddie knows this in his bones, the way he knows the sky is blue and the grass is green and Derry is a special little slice of hell transplanted into Maine.

He wonders if this is what Mike felt—this helplessness, waiting for something to happen, waiting for news, _waiting_. But it isn’t quite the same, is it? Because there’s someone Eddie is here for.

“Be careful,” he says, before the call disconnects.

“You too,” says Mike.

“Don’t fall through the trap door,” says Ben.

\--

Eddie goes to the Barrens.

Eddie does not fall through the trap door. Instead, he prods at the ground with a broomstick until it hits something wooden and hollow, then crouches down to knock. “Hey, Richie, I know you’re in here,” he says. “Let me in.”

“What in the _fuck_,” says Richie from underneath, sounding alarmed. That’s—strange. He sounds like he’s pretty far down, only the clubhouse was never that big. It had barely been big enough for the seven of them at full adult height, and Richie, the tallest of all of them and the one with the freakishly huge forehead, had nearly knocked his head on a beam. “Eddie, what are you _doing_ here?!”

“You forgot your lunch while you were giving me the cold shoulder, genius,” Eddie tells him. “Let me in or I’ll break my diet and risk a heart attack.”

“I’ve seen you eat burgers, you’re fine,” Richie says.

“At thirteen!” says Eddie, shaking the paper bag at the trap door. “I’m forty now, I’m more at risk of cholesterol build-up and a fucking heart attack! Let me the fuck in!”

“I’m not fucking letting you in,” says Richie, “just wait up there, I’m coming up. Jesus, Eds.”

Eddie sits down, then, planting his ass on the dirt beside the trap door and trying very very hard not to think about what else might be in that dirt. After a moment, the trap door opens, and Richie pokes his head up, squinting at Eddie and the sunlight.

“Fuck,” says Eddie, softly, seeing the white paint streaked across Richie’s cheek, spreading slowly outward. “Rich?”

“Yeah,” says Richie, rubbing at the white makeup with a tired sigh. Eddie notes, uneasily, the frills on his sleeves. Those hadn’t been there before. “It’s a bad day, Eds. Why’d you come out here? You know it’s dangerous with me like this, right?”

That—had been a thought, screaming in the back of Eddie’s mind, but it’s Richie. He’d do some wild shit for the guy. Has done, in fact. “I wanted to talk to you again after that mess in the bathroom,” he says, with a shrug. “You weren’t talking back.”

“You could’ve just fallen asleep or something,” Richie points out. “I coulda talked to you then, and you wouldn’t have to…” He stops, then looks away, scratching at the white make-up. Bits of it flake off, but so does some of Richie’s skin, his nails leaving blood welling in its wake. _You wouldn’t have to see me like this,_ hangs in the air between them.

“Just isn’t the same,” says Eddie, deciding not to point out how disturbing that is. “Are you going to take the damn burger now? I waded through the goddamn _Kenduskeag_ to get here, god knows how much shit’s in there. I’m probably gonna get athlete’s foot if not some kind of nasty-ass infection from the water—”

“Okay, okay,” says Richie, climbing out of the clubhouse properly and snatching the burger from his grasp. “Don’t have to be so fucking dramatic about it, Jesus. Athlete’s foot is normal, man, everybody gets it.”

“Not everyone, are you _okay_,” says Eddie. “It only happens when your foot’s been wet a while and you’ve been keeping it in your shoes and—” His eyes, quite unwillingly, are pulled to the gaping hole in Richie’s chest, and the memory flickers in the forefront of his mind: Richie, with a claw through his chest, blinking down at Eddie in shock. _Eds?_ he’d said, his voice cracking the way it used to, when they were young, so small and scared.

Eddie hadn’t screamed. He heard Bill screaming, heard Stan, but Eddie had only whispered Richie’s name.

Richie now folds down into a sitting position in front of him, and says, snapping his fingers in front of Eddie’s face, “Hey, hey. Ground Control to Edward Kaspbrak.” He doesn’t do a Voice. Come to think of it, has he done a Voice in a while, besides that Harrison Ford impression Pennywise broke through? Eddie kind of misses them, wonders what happened to them, to Richie pulling them out at the drop of a hat. “Come in, Kaspbrak, come in. Getcha spaghetti-head in the game.”

“Stop mixing metaphors,” Eddie complains, catching Richie’s wrist and pushing his hand away from his face. He doesn’t let go, though, even through the instinctive flash of revulsion at touching something that’s still wet from the sewers. “I was just—thinking, that’s all. Trying to figure out where I fucked up in trying to exorcise It from you with Stan’s book.”

“You didn’t fuck up,” says Richie. He doesn’t pull away from Eddie, and the color starts to seep back into his skin. Huh. That’s something. Eddie files away that thought for later.

“Let me own my mistakes, Rich,” he says, stroking his thumb over Richie’s wrist. Is it just him, or is there something beating, faintly, under Richie’s skin? Certainly it could just be the clown, but then if it were then Eddie doubts it’d be trying to give him _hope_. “I did fuck up somewhere. I didn’t believe in them enough—I can believe plenty of shit,” his mother can attest to that, “but I don’t have the strength of belief of seven people. Nobody does.”

Richie goes quiet, looking down at their hands, at Eddie holding his wrist. He breathes out slow, then gently pulls his hand away. “You’re thinking about calling them back now?” he asks, and Eddie doesn’t miss the thread of anxiety under his voice. “Because—I don’t know, Eds, there’s a lot I can’t guarantee if every Loser’s here.”

“Not right now,” says Eddie, “they’re going to check out a lead on saving you.” All the way out in Florida, for some reason. Well, at least Mike’s gonna fulfill a lifelong dream. He adds, “Whaddaya mean?”

“It’s holding a grudge,” says Richie. “If all seven of us are here—” He stops, cocks his head to the side, and shivers as if something’s whispering in his ear. “It says it missed you all,” he says, his eyes going briefly unfocused, the white paint spreading across one side of his face like a rash. Eddie catches a hint of sharp teeth on one side of Richie’s mouth. “It says it _craved_ you all, and I’m an—wow, I’m an appetizer, huh? I’m the only goddamn meal you’re getting, shitweed.”

“Rich,” says Eddie, “I’m right here, are you talking to the _clown_,” and Richie shakes his head. The teeth flash once more, before Richie scrubs his hand over his mouth and they disappear, like they never were.

“Sorry,” says Richie. “I’m—it’s—usually I’m _alone_ out here, Eddie, nobody comes out here anymore because I keep chasing them off.”

And doesn’t that break Eddie’s heart like nothing else. Richie withers in isolation, starves in the darkness, he’s known that about his best friend since forever. “You suck at being alone, you used to hate detention because you were always _alone_, unless I got in trouble with you,” Eddie says now. “Also, who gave you the right to chase people out of the Barrens, asshole? The place doesn’t belong to you.”

“Oh, no, I pissed all over the trees here, it’s definitely my territory now,” says Richie, with a little smile.

“Oh my god, you’re not a fucking animal,” says Eddie, reaching over to smack his shoulder. “_Still_ doesn’t belong to you, at least not you alone. That’s _our_ place you’re squatting in.”

Ours, as in the Losers, not Derry’s. Even now, after uprooting his whole life in New York and moving out here, Eddie can’t completely think of himself as Derry’s, anymore. There’s always a split between him and the rest of Derry, in his head, a line delineating the Losers from the rest, and it’s been there since they were kids, since the seven of them all came together. _There’s us and there’s them, and fuck them._

“We did kinda collapse the last lair It had,” Richie says, “and—the clubhouse is a good place to stay. No one else knows it’s there.” _No one gets hurt out here but me,_ he doesn’t say, but Eddie hears it anyway, and it’s a knife in the stomach, the tip wriggling and tearing through soft fleshy insides. “You shouldn’t be here, Eds,” says Richie, quietly.

“You’re not the boss of me, Rich,” says Eddie, softly. “And you definitely don’t own the Barrens either. I’ll come and go whenever I want.”

“Not even if I tell you it’s a bad idea?” Richie asks. “And you know it’s fucking _terrible_ if I’m the one saying it. Like ditching New York for Derry.”

Eddie knows that, already. He’s known since he got into his car and drove all the way to Derry, his belongings packed up in the trunk. He’s known since he first dreamed of Richie, screaming for help. He’s known for—a while that this, all of this, is probably not the safest thing he could ever have done. He’s a risk analyst. He’s run the numbers. He ran them on the way to Derry and he ran them on the way to the Barrens, and came up with some terrible, terrible odds.

The thing is that he doesn’t care. Or, okay, that’s wrong. He _does_ care, but—

“It’s worth the risk,” he says out loud. “You’re worth the risk.” He reaches over, pats Richie on the shoulder and says, “Losers stick together.”

Richie’s eyes flicker that terrifying gold for a moment, before Eddie takes his hand once more. Then they flicker back to blue, and Richie says, “That’s what I’m scared of.”

“Oh, come on, what, you scared of us now or something?” Eddie asks, scoffing. “I promise I’ll make sure we don’t bully you to fucking _death_.”

“Oh, no, that’s not what I’m scared of, that’s what I’m counting on you to do to It,” says Richie. “I don’t want you assholes to get fucking killed together. I’m—That would just fucking break me.” _And It knows that,_ he doesn’t say, but it’s the logical conclusion to that thought process.

“We’re gonna be fine,” says Eddie, squeezing Richie’s hand tightly. “We killed this fucking clown before. Like, _twice_. We can do it again.”

“We’re the worst clown-killers,” says Richie, “if we gotta do it three times to get it right.”

“In our defense,” says Eddie, “it’s an alien demon clown that feeds on kids, conventional means weren’t going to work from the get-go.” But three—third time’s the charm, Eddie thinks, and if seven’s a magic number then surely, so’s three. The third time, he knows, they’ll kill It for good and all.

They just have to save Richie first.


	7. and we love like fools

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Lauren Aquilina's "Fools".
> 
> **content warnings:** spoilers for Duma Key. mentions of drug use.

Bev’s sitting on a dune-coated beach when Richie sees her, clear and strong. She’s set up two lawn chairs and a striped umbrella, and sips a glass of pink lemonade as he walks up, feeling weirdly overdressed for the dream. When he looks around, he sees a house in the distance, painted pink, part of it jutting out over the sea. Seashells dot the sand around them, and Richie swears he sees—tennis balls, apparently, floating off the shore. Floating amongst the tennis balls is a single paper boat, and Richie wonders, suddenly, if that’s the boat that started this whole mess.

A turtle is making its slow way back to the sea. For a moment, Richie swears it swivels its head to look at him, but—that would be ridiculous.

“This isn’t California,” he says. That much is obvious to him already, years of living in LA have acquainted him with a lot of the nearby beaches.

“No, it’s Florida,” says Bev. She grins at him and nods to the empty lawn chair. “Hi, Richie.”

“Has Mike scored with a grandma yet?” Richie asks, sitting as she’s bid him to do.

“No,” says Bev, unable to repress a little smile. “Not a lot of grandmas around here, really. This is Duma Key, it’s practically uninhabited. Especially around this time of year.” She nods to the ocean in front of them, stretching out for what looks and feels like an infinity. “Nice place, right?”

“Fuck yeah,” says Richie. “Almost makes me want to live in Florida, get busy with all the grandmas. They don’t all have dried-up cooches, do they?”

“Beep beep, Richie,” says Bev, smiling fondly. The smile disappears when she adds, “I don’t think it’s going to last much longer.”

Richie cuts a surprised glance over to her. She’s leaning forward, looking off at—something in the horizon, something building, a storm about to blow in. “How d’you know?” he asks. “Is it the Deadlights?”

Bev chews on her lower lip, then lets out a breath and says, “Sort of. But also, there’s this artist named Freemantle.”

“One-armed artist from Florida, yeah, I know,” says Richie. “That’s the one whose paintings are cursed, right?”

“Not just cursed,” she says, “they’re—they were _possessed_. They served as channels _of_ possession, anyway, for a thing that talked through the seashells, through those paintings. Through the pipes.”

A cold stone drops right into Richie’s stomach. “But It’s in _Derry_,” he manages, “fuck, Bev, _I’m_ It.”

“It’s not here,” Bev says. “Whatever this thing was, it’s—_close_ to Pennywise, but it’s not. It wasn’t.” She shakes her head. “Pennywise covered a small town and didn’t go further. This thing Freemantle dealt with, it wasn’t the same. It got to people via his paintings.” She takes a sip of her lemonade, and says, “He can paint things, too. I mean _visions_, like I used to have. He had a painting of us ready when we came here, you know?”

“What?”

“He called it _The Seekers,_” says Bev. “Me, Mike, Bill and Ben. Watching the sunset. He knew we were coming—not our names, not exactly why, just that we were coming to ask for help.” She drums her fingers on her arm rest, takes a long sip of her lemonade. Richie wonders, suddenly, where her cigarettes are, if she’s trying to quit, if even in dreams she’s trying not to reach for a pack of cigarettes. “We didn’t get much,” she says, sounding almost apologetic. “His recommendation was to seal It away, push it into something inanimate and then dump it somewhere in the middle of the ocean, but when we asked what to do about you he wasn’t helpful.”

“Let me guess, I die in this plan,” says Richie.

“Yeah,” says Bev, and there’s fire in her eyes, makes him think of Ben’s little poem, _your hair is winter fire_. Her eyes are fire too, but they’re a wildfire, stubborn in not going out no matter what. Dangerous, too. “Not acceptable.” She sips at her lemonade again as the tide comes in, leaving a tennis ball on the shore. The little paper boat floats on the water, still, riding each wave no matter how tall, no matter if it should overwhelm the flimsy little thing. “Just sealing It away isn’t acceptable either. We have to _kill It_, properly. That’s the only way to make sure It doesn’t hurt anyone ever again.”

“You know that’s a tall order, right?” Richie asks. “You can kill It, or you can save me, I don’t—I don’t know if you can do both.”

“I don’t know either,” says Bev, “but it’s worth the trying.”

Worth the trying. God. Richie can’t remember the last time someone thought he was worth even that much. Or—he can, really, but it had been before he’d moved away from Derry. Just a little over twenty years, then.

He’s missed Bev. He’s missed Eddie. He’s missed the Losers, has for a very long time. The absence of them had left a hole in his heart he hadn’t known how to fix, and he’d been so lonely, and he’d thought that was _fine_. He’d thought it was _fair_. But now there are six people in this world who want to save him, six people who mourned his death, six people who leave an empty chair for him at their table, and Richie is—loved. Loved and missed.

“If it doesn’t work?” he asks.

Bev looks away from him. “There was another painting,” she says, softly. “Of you and Eddie.”

“Oh,” says Richie, feeling—exposed, somehow, his chest flayed open. Some rando one-armed artist in Florida _knows_? Fuck weird psychic powers and fuck It and fuck this thing like It that’s sleeping in the ocean somewhere, trapped in an inanimate object, starving slowly to death. Richie is sick to death of them yanking him around like this. God-fucking-dammit, he just wanted to get up on stage and make people _laugh_. Or just—make one person laugh, really. One person with brown eyes, one little spitfire hypochondriac, no matter how much it made his palms sweat.

“He was holding you,” Bev explains. “Like in Neibolt. He was holding on to your corpse, and that’s what the guy painted. It _looked_ like Neibolt, but it—wasn’t the way I remembered it.” She sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe Freemantle got some of the details wrong, he’s never met any of us before today and he’s certainly never met you or Eddie.”

Maybe. Or maybe it’s the future. Maybe the light at the end of this hellish tunnel is the one everyone goes into after they die. Maybe they succeed in killing It, but they can’t save Richie. Maybe Richie’s doomed, either way, but at least he’ll die as himself.

It’s an odd feeling, knowing you’ll likely die. Almost certainly die. Richie wonders if he should be more—in denial about it, the way everyone else seems to be, instead of resigned.

But he doesn’t say that. Better not to deflate his friends’ hopes and dreams, this time. Better to be selfish, because maybe then, even in this half-life parody he’s trapped in, he can steal some time from It to spend with his friends, before he becomes truly dangerous.

“You got any more where that lemonade’s from?” he asks, changing the subject away from psychic one-armed artists and Eddie holding his corpse, the future that he thinks is waiting for him.

To Bev’s credit, she doesn’t call him out on it.

\--

Richie’s been missing for just under a month when his old agent calls Bill’s phone. “Apparently,” Bill says, over Skype, looking pretty exhausted from having flown to London from Florida, “he thinks Richie’s off doing d-d-drugs in a mountain cabin s-suh-somewhere.”

“You’re fucking with me,” says Eddie. He’s in the townhouse right now, enjoying a day off (really sorting through Mike’s bulging files on Derry in what used to be the townhouse lobby) and praying to whatever god is willing to hear him out that the repair company isn’t running rings around the people he’s delegated to, the sneaky fucks.

“Well, okay, the m-mmm-mountain cabin’s an embellishment,” says Bill, giving a ghost of an exhausted smile, his stutter coming through in his tired state, “but he thinks Rrr-Richie’s in r-r-rehab or something like that. A mental health retreat, he c-c-c-called it. I t-told him, we wouldn’t have f-f-filed a missing persons report if he was, if we knew where he was, and d-d-d-do you know what the guy sssss-suh-said?”

Eddie braces himself. “What?” he asks, warily.

“He said th-there wasn’t any n-n-need,” says Bill, the smile vanishing as he shakes his head, clearly _pissed_. “Th-That Richie’s just, just getting his k-k-kicks off and out of his system before he goes back to work, that he s-sometimes goes on hiatus that way, and w-we shouldn’t w-w-wuh-_worry_ so much about him, he’s a big boy. And that of c-c-course we didn’t know where he went because we don’t kn-know Richie and we don’t know his f-fucking _habits_.” That’s when Bill gives a mirthless chuckle. “He said th-the agency was considering d-dropping Richie.”

“I hope you told him to fuck off,” says Eddie, feeling rage twisting his guts around in knots. “Scratch that, what’s his number, _I’ll_ do it—”

“No, I did it already,” says Audra fucking Phillips herself, poking her head into frame and pecking Bill on the temple. Eddie briefly stares at the screen, mouth agape, before he shakes his head. It’s so _weird_ seeing Audra, the actual Audra herself, like this—not in character, not in a public persona, not on the red carpet, just a woman who looks pretty fucking close to Bev. It’s even weirder seeing her and Bill just being married, because. Well. That’s _Bill_, that’s one of Eddie’s best friends, and usually your childhood friends don’t grow up to get married to A-list actresses. “You must be Eddie,” Audra’s saying.

“Hi,” Eddie manages, not quite sounding like himself. He coughs, then says, “Uh, yeah, I’m Eddie Kaspbrak. I’m—a friend of your husband’s, we grew up together.”

“I t-told her, Eddie, it’s fine,” says Bill.

“Marriage counseling works wonders,” Audra adds. “Less so with the—clown. Thing. Which I’m still not sure I believe, Bill.” But she loves him, Eddie realizes, so she’s trying to. After all, the effects are right there, have been since they all got back from Derry to their real lives. To fix their real lives, in some cases.

“Yeah, honestly, for the b-b-best you didn’t,” Bill says, with a tired sigh. “It was t-traumatic.”

Stan told Patty and Bill told Audra, and neither of them had Stan or Bill committed. Patty wholeheartedly believes them, and Audra might not think the same way, but she’s at least willing to try. Eddie is glad for his friends, he really is, they’ve lucked out better than the rest of them in settling down, but—he tries to imagine telling Myra about all of it. Derry, the clown, Richie dying. _I loved you so much._

She would absolutely have him committed.

For the best, really, that he didn’t. He wonders if she’s having a good time in New York, and hopes she is. Their marriage had never worked for either of them, as much as they’d tried to make it work. Or she’d tried, and Eddie had gone along with it, because what else could he do? Besides, she wanted to keep him safe.

But love doesn’t just mean wanting to keep someone safe behind a wall, keeping the rest of the world away. Love is Bev handing him the fencepost because she believes he could kill It, love is Bill sitting next to him and apologizing for what he said and holding Eddie close while Eddie breaks down crying, love is the Losers surrounding him and holding him and grieving with him. Love is Richie, trying to make him laugh, putting himself between Eddie and the monster, telling him _you’re braver than you think_, saving him simply because he wanted Eddie to make it out of the house alive.

Love, Eddie thinks, is when you trust your wife enough to tell her the truth: the whole, fantastic, unbelievable truth. Love is when she believes you anyway.

“So did his management drop him?” Eddie asks, now.

“It’s looking like they might,” says Audra, elbowing her husband. “Bill, sweetie, budge up, there’s room on this couch for two.”

Bill obliges, and Audra settles in beside him, leaning into his side. “W-We’re working on finding a n-new agency if they do,” says Bill. “Or. Well. Audra is.”

“I know people,” says Audra. “More people than Bill does, anyway. And I’ve been through this shit before, I want to make things easier on Tozier once he gets back. When you rescue him from—whatever you’re going to rescue him from, you tell him to call me, all right? I’ll give him a list of names to hit up.”

“Yeah, will do,” says Eddie, scribbling out a note on a pad of Post-Its: _call Audra_. He wonders if Richie’s listening in on them right now, and knocks out some taps in Morse code in case he can. _R-I-C-H-I-E._

Nothing.

“M-Mike came with me to London,” Bill’s saying, “we’re gonna check around the mmm-more occult b-buh-buh-bookstores here, see if there’s s-sss-something worth trying in them.”

Eddie drums his fingers against his leg and says, “The Sìth.”

“What?”

“Uh, fairies from Scotland,” says Eddie, getting a raised eyebrow from Audra. “It’s—okay, it sounds weird, but I ran into this kid who’d met Richie in the woods, and he said something about these Sìth that made me _wonder_, y’know? Like, the stories are probably very exaggerated by now, but what if there’s something in there we can use? If we go back far enough?”

“Fairies,” Audra repeats, frowning. “That’s. Uh.”

“That could work,” says Bill, leaning in close. His gaze flicks towards Audra, and he leans into her side to whisper something in her ear. She sighs.

“If you’re sure, Bill,” she says, kissing him lightly on the cheek before she leaves.

“Would it?” Eddie asks.

“Th-There’s one way to find out,” says Bill. “Mike and I’ll t-t-take a trip tomorrow. I have a couple of fff-fuh-friends from college here and in Scuh-Scotland, I can ask them for help. And if they n-need to know anything, why,” and a corner of his mouth lifts upward, in a knowing, conspiratorial smile, “I’m j-just doing some research for a b-book.”

They talk for a little while more after that, mostly just Bill catching Eddie up on developments on both _Attic Room_ and _Homecoming Queen_ (they’ve reached a deal and now casting’s in process) and some writer named Paul Sheldon coming out with a new book, _Misery’s Return_.

“I think I remember him,” says Eddie, the memory swimming back up, of a scrappy teen of fifteen scowling at little Eddie Kaspbrak as Eddie biked past his house. “The Sheldons lived right across the street from us, he was ol’ Paulie who smoked like a chimney when his mom wasn’t home—hey, think he remembers Derry?”

“P-P-P-Paulie Sheldon, _fuck_, I completely forgot we knew him,” says Bill. “Maybe not. Maybe it’s for the best he d-doesn’t. He’s b-been through some shit lately.”

Eddie can hardly blame Bill for thinking that way. Hell, he’d gladly forget It again if he could, but he doesn’t want to forget his friends again. He doesn’t want to let the bravery slip through his fingers again. If it’s a choice between forgetting his friends and It or remembering It and his friends, Eddie would choose to keep the memory, every time, carve it into his heart with a kitchen knife.

The conversation winds down, after that. Eventually, Bill calls off, wanting to grab some time to write before he falls into the waiting arms of sleep. Eddie wishes him a good night, then turns the laptop off and walks up to his bedroom, intending to get his running clothes and go for a jog.

“Oh, you motherfucker,” he sighs when he opens the door, because Richie’s written on the wall, in tomato sauce Eddie just _knows_ he got from the kitchen, _HOW DID BILL LAND THAT?_ “I have to clean this!”

There’s a laugh from the pipes, bright and sweet. A knock echoes from the walls, _S-O-R-R-Y_.

“Yeah, you’re real fucking sorry,” Eddie mutters. “Are you going to clean this up if I leave this? Knock once for yes and—actually, just knock once.” He waves a hand at the message, now dripping down the walls in thick, tomato-y strands. Eugh. “I’m going for a run. This better be cleaned up by the time I get back, Richie.”

There’s a knock on the wall before it falls silent.

After that, and after pulling on his shorts and plugging in his earbuds, Eddie walks out the door, out of the townhouse, and starts jogging.

He’d gotten into the habit in New York, while in college—his roommate Veronica Sawyer liked to clear her head after a night of nightmares via a morning jog, and Eddie had joined up with her on account of _why the fuck not_. He’d come to like it: his feet slapping against the ground, his body pushing against its limits just a little bit further. After marrying Myra, he went from weekly runs to almost _daily_ runs, one of the few escapes he had. And they had been escapes, during their marriage: a place she didn’t know, a thing all his own, because she couldn’t ever fathom running in _New York City_ but figured that if he was healthy and avoided the Bad Neighborhoods, clearly, it wasn’t too bad.

Derry’s different from New York. Smaller, for one thing. And New York might be a cesspool of crime and filth, but sure as shit it’ll never hold a candle to Derry. New York has human criminals, and even the worst ones, the ones in the newspapers with big headlines about their crimes, are simply—human, just really fucked up in their souls. Derry has, _had_ an evil child-eating demonic murder clown alien living in its sewers, and it’s still shaking off the hangover from Pennywise’s rotten whiskey. Derry has known _evil_ in its (Its) purest form, the way New York and Los Angeles and all those other cities never will. Compared to the fucking clown, what’s a mugger with a knife? At least the mugger won’t show him his worst fears and then eat his corpse.

Start slow. Put the speed on slow—a bit at a time, until you’re running faster than the beat of the drums pounding in your ears, until Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” fades to something else, _wouldn’t it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn’t have to wait so long…_

Wouldn’t it be nice, indeed. God, Richie had practically been screaming his love through that mixtape, hadn’t he? Madonna, Beach Boys, The Cure, The Smiths, Cyndi fucking Lauper crooning _if you’re lost you can look and you will find me, time after time,_ they’d all been Richie trying to say _I love you_ somehow without giving it away. Of course Eddie had felt better listening to this mixtape. Not safer, but more—supported, somehow, like even if he fell someone would catch him, not hold him back so he wouldn’t fall in the first place.

_I loved you so much._ So much that Richie could’ve said, instead of that. Could’ve made a joke, could’ve said something about fucking Eddie’s mom just to cheer him up, for old times’ sakes. Could’ve said something about killing the damn clown for him, joked about clown-on-clown violence, done a Voice. Could’ve made some other dumb joke, because that’s something Richie does, he jokes around, he runs off at the mouth, _beep-beep, Richie, you’re dying._

But he hadn’t. He’d looked Eddie in the eye with a smile as brittle as autumn leaves and said, _God, I loved you so much._ No Voices, no jokes, just Richie laying that last secret bare with his last breath.

Eddie comes to a stop, hand grasping blindly till he finds a tree to hold onto, squeezing his eyes shut in a vain attempt to hold the tears back. _Your heart beats next to mine, wouldn’t it be nice, if you’re lost you can look and you will find me time after time, the beating of our hearts is the only sound,_ all those songs, all the jokes, all the lingering touches—add them all up, you get _I loved you so much_. Richie’s been saying _I love you_ for goddamn years. Eddie should’ve heard it earlier than he did. Maybe had, but mistook it for the beat of his own heart. Instead he heard it and knew it too late, and when he came back to Richie he was gone, gone, gone, finally, where Eddie couldn’t follow, where Richie would never hear him say it back.

He can now, he knows that. He hopes Richie knows he loves him back, even if the words still stick in his throat without someone dragging them out of him. But even now, the grief swells up from his heart and chokes him, the way it did in those first horrible weeks afterwards. It still fucking hurts even knowing that Richie’s in the sewers waiting to be rescued, almost alive. In some ways it’s worse. Grief doesn’t give half a shit what’s rational and what’s not, Eddie’s learned that. All he can do is bend over and just _breathe_.

Just breathe, Eds. Just breathe through it. He drags in a shaky breath then sighs it back out, one, two, three. By the time he straightens back up, his vision has stopped swimming, and if his eyes are puffy from crying, well, no one’s going to notice. It’s his day off.

He runs back. The Teen Queens come on as he’s running back, and of all fucking things to hear as his feet slap against the ground, it has to be this: _Eddie my love, I love you so, how I wanted for you, you’ll never know. Please, Eddie, don’t make me wait too long..._

Making a digital version of his beloved mixtape to run to maybe wasn’t the smartest idea, Eddie figures. By the time he’s back at the townhouse, the grief and regret and guilt have smacked him over the head at least twice more, and he’s just about ready to crawl back into bed and take advantage of his day off to fuckin’ _sleep_.

He opens the door to his bedroom, and stops in his tracks right there in the doorway. The message is gone, the wall mysteriously scrubbed clean, but a red rose lies on one of his bleached-white pillows, its stem scraped clean of thorns.

“You sap,” he says, out loud, unable to stop himself from smiling at the sight of it. He makes up his mind, then: later. He’ll tell Richie later. It can’t be that hard, it’s just four words, _I love you too._

\--

Eddie closes his eyes. Moments later, or at least it feels like moments to him, he opens them again to find himself standing outside a squat black building, with IMPROV COMEDY CLUB printed in large, Hollywood-style letters where he can’t miss it.

It’s a hot summer’s day. He can practically feel his feet cooking even in their sensible shoes. It’s not a hard decision to make, between the club and the sun—he goes inside, because at least the club probably has drinks and air conditioning. Sure enough, he’s blasted with cold air the second he walks inside the—the empty building.

Well. Of course it’s empty. It’s a dream. Eddie ducks into one of the side bars to find Richie sitting there at the counter, wearing Eddie’s old jacket, the red one he lost in the sewers. It hadn’t hid the blood as well as it ought to have, turning dark with it and soaking through onto Eddie’s hand.

“Did you get the rose?” Richie asks, as Eddie hops into a bar stool next to him. There’s a glass of something amber in front of him, but he isn’t touching it just yet. A turtle is snoozing down the counter, god only knows where it came from.

From one eyeblink to the next, a Long Island iced tea somehow pops into existence in front of Eddie.

“Neat trick,” says Eddie, and wants to smack himself for it. _Neat trick_? God-fucking-dammit, he’s forty years old, he should be able to come up with better than that! “Yeah, I—I got the rose.”

“I got it from my mom’s old flower shop,” Richie confesses, a hint of his old mischief flickering in his eyes. “Remember, we used to play there all the time, and she’d tell us not to play rough ‘cause we’d knock the pots over? Remember when we were seven and we _did_?”

God, does Eddie remember. “She was _so fucking mad_,” he says. “She grounded you for a week, didn’t she?”

“Yeah!” says Richie. “Yeah, it felt like the end of the world, she specifically said I couldn’t go see you. I couldn’t see anyone but I definitely could not go see you. I was so fucking _miserable_ about that until you came through my window.”

Eddie laughs, remembering it now: he’d snuck out of the house and biked as hard and as fast as he could on his little bicycle, sticking cotton in the bell so it wouldn’t give him away. He’d even hidden his bike behind a big bush, and then clambered up the tree the way Richie had shown him just weeks ago, trying very hard not to look down. Then he’d scrambled across the branch and knocked on Richie’s window, and hissed, _Let me in! Let me in! Why did you take the highest fucking window I’m gonna fall and my brains are gonna splatter out onto the ground let me in!_ Richie had let him in, eyes wide, and then hugged him fiercely. “I remember,” he says. “I didn’t look down the whole time, I thought I was gonna die if I did. You know, I think your mom almost saw me?”

“She totally saw you,” Richie assures him. “She just didn’t wanna fuck up your knight in shining armor routine.”

“What does that make you, the princess in the tower?” Eddie asks.

“Fuck no, I’d be a shitty princess,” says Richie. “It makes me the thing sealed away in the tower that only the purest of hearts can touch, or some shit like that.”

“What the fuck kind of movies did you watch when you were seven,” Eddie marvels. “That’s really fucking specific.”

“The same kind you did,” says Richie. “I just paid more attention than you did.”

“Because we’d watch at nine and I’d be falling asleep by that time!” Eddie huffs, smacking Richie’s shoulder. “It’s a miracle I even stayed awake for your shitty fantasy movies. Or some kind of testament.”

“To what?” Richie asks, tilting his head. His eyes are fixed on Eddie’s, his eyes are blue, and his hand reaches for Eddie’s, fingers settling over Eddie’s knuckles. Waiting. He’s had practice, Eddie remembers, thirty years’ worth of it. God. Eddie wants to lean over and kiss his lips, wants to take him to bed, wants to pull him close and never let him go. Wants everything, with Richie. All he has to do is to say it.

_How much I love you. I love you. I love you._ The words stick in his throat, unable to leave even when Eddie tries his best to push them out.

“How badly I was bothered by that spring in your mattress poking into my ass,” Eddie says instead.

Richie laughs, squeezing Eddie’s hand. “The spring gave my mattress _character_,” he says, and if he’s disappointed, he isn’t letting it show. Used to be Richie was an open book Eddie could read, but 27 years apart have added new chapters and rewritten old pages, and now Eddie’s trying to find where he left off. Maybe trying to start over.

Eddie squeezes back, and hopes that’s enough for now, at least for Richie. It’s not enough for Eddie, not as good as the words that keep sticking in his throat, refusing to come out. “It also gave me insomnia,” he says. “How you could sleep on that bed I’ll never understand.”

“Like a baby,” Richie says. “Not my fault you were a sensitive old man even at seven.”

“Well, I guess that explains a lot,” Eddie says, “at seven you acted like you were two years old.”

“You dick,” says Richie, fondly, rubbing a thumb over Eddie’s knuckles. Eddie swallows, at the sustained contact, half-certain his heart might just claw its way out of his ribcage.

“Where are we, anyway?” Eddie asks, changing the subject away from their shared childhood, the bittersweet memories they’d forgotten when they left Derry.

“Hollywood Improv,” says Richie. “I used to come here all the time, do sets, sometimes sketches with other people.” He nods to the stage just beyond them, empty with only a microphone stand in the middle, waiting for someone to get up on stage. “It’s a good place to go, if you’re the type who wants drinks with your comedy,” he says. “I thought about the Groundlings Theater, but it’d just be empty and depressing without anybody else inside. You wouldn’t like that. I wanna take you to places that aren’t majorly depressing when empty, so—” He shrugs. “Here we are. This is the first time ever I’ve seen this place empty. Maybe one day you’ll see it with the crowd in.”

“Maybe you could introduce me to a couple of people,” says Eddie. “I mean, you’ve got friends, I’ve seen you on TV, you talk about them.”

Richie smiles, a sad little thing. “Not a lot of friends like the Losers,” he says. “None at all, probably. And definitely no one like you, ever.” No one, Eddie realizes, who would crawl through Richie’s window for the sole purpose of keeping him company when he was grounded, or sick, or just didn’t want to be alone. Richie takes a sip of his whiskey, and says, matter-of-factly, “I don’t think a single fucking one of them would be as worried as you guys are about me. I know my management wouldn’t.”

“You heard?” Eddie asks.

“I mean, I knew from the start, kinda,” says Richie. “It’s Hollywood, man, it’s just the business.”

Just the business. _No one like you._ They’ve both been so lonely, but Eddie at least had a few people he could talk to, sometimes, that Myra didn’t really know. No one on the level of the Losers, never anyone else, but there were people who passed in and out of his life that he considered good friends. He wonders if Richie even had that much.

Then again, there’s the elephant in the room he’s been trying to cover, the one they’ve been tiptoeing around. Maybe he didn’t. Eddie can still remember the way his mother used to watch them when they grew older, like she didn’t like how close Richie would get, and he knows Richie didn’t touch a lot of other boys as much.

“God, Rich,” says Eddie, softly, squeezing his hand, his heart cracking for Richie. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” says Richie, smiling again, and this one doesn’t reach his eyes, “I’m fine. Really, Eds.”

“No, hey,” says Eddie, then, “C’mere, asshole.” He tugs on Richie’s hand, to urge him closer, and miracle of miracles, Richie goes. “I’m sorry,” he says, wrapping his arms around Richie and pulling him as close as he can. This close, he smells cheap deodorant and roses, the musty odor of the clubhouse the last time the seven of them had been inside it together. This close, Richie just feels warm. “I’m sorry that no one crawled through your window to keep you company.”

“Kinda hard,” Richie croaks, his voice breaking even as he tries to sound casual and light, “since my apartment’s on the 19th floor. Or it used to be. I think I don’t have it anymore.”

Eddie just hugs him tighter, biting back his instinctive answer. This is important, and maybe he can’t say _I love you_, but he can say something else instead. He can say _you are not alone._ “Rich,” he says, stroking over his back. “Richie. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Richie doesn’t say anything. But he leans in close and wraps his arms around Eddie, hugging back tightly and slumping against him till his face is buried in Eddie’s chest, as if he’s scared It will yank him away once more. He sniffles, and Eddie shuts his eyes, because goddammit they’re _both_ going to cry, aren’t they. Well, whatever. He clings tight to Richie, unwilling to let him go, and holds him as Richie’s shoulders start to shake.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Eddie says, and is surprised to find he means it. If he has to stay in Derry then so be it. He can be brave enough to do that. He can be brave enough to stay, for however long it takes. “I’m staying right here, right fucking here until we can get you out.” _I love you._

Richie makes a noise into his shirt, then looks up and blinks at him. He leans back up again, one hand letting go of Eddie’s shirt to press against his face, and asks hesitantly, “Eds, is it okay if I—”

Eddie leans in close to kiss him, before he can think better of it. Richie freezes up instantly, eyes going wide, and oh, fuck, Eddie’s done something wrong, hasn’t he? He breaks away then and says, “Shit, Rich, I’m sorry, I knew you had a—a thing about touch—”

“Do that again,” Richie says. “I wasn’t ready that time.” Then he laughs, almost breathless with it. “Am I ever ready for you, though?” he asks. “I’ve been holding this torch for goddamn forever, I dunno how to put it down.”

“Let me hold it with you, then,” says Eddie, and tugs him in close to kiss him again, in an empty bar in LA, in a dream that feels real enough for him. Stan had given him and the other Losers the letters that would’ve been sent out when he died, and had given Eddie Richie’s letter. _Be who you want to be. Be proud. And for god’s sake, Richie, tell him, he’ll always care about you._ Stan’s always been a perceptive one.

Richie goes, closing his eyes this time to kiss back, tender and gentle. Eddie was expecting him to be a lot of things for their first kiss, but somehow _tender_ did not, in fact, register as any of them. But he is tender, even gentle, like he’s handling something precious and doesn’t want to break it, doesn’t want to disrespect it in any way.

Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever been kissed like this. Myra’s kisses were perfunctory, the kind of thing they wanted over with as soon as possible so they could get on with their day. His girlfriends definitely never kissed like this, like kissing Eddie’s an act of reverence, done gladly, with the scrape of stubble against his bare skin. Eddie threads his fingers to Richie’s hair, leans back in the stool as far as he can go without toppling over so Richie can crowd in, touch him, god, Richie is _touching him_ and Eddie’s a fucking livewire under his own skin.

Eventually they have to break away from each other, and Richie looks floored, to say the least, eyes wide and grin dopey. “Where’d you learn to kiss like that?” he asks.

“It’s a dream,” says Eddie, loftily, “I’ll kiss however I want.”

“Mm, fair,” says Richie. His hand wanders into Eddie’s hair, and Eddie shivers at his touch. This should’ve been his first kiss. This should’ve been his wedding kiss. Electricity thrums under his skin where Richie is touching him, his nerves alight. He knows he’s asleep, right now, but he’s never felt more alive, more like flying, than he does right now. “Hang on, does this count as our first kiss? Does anything we do in dreams like this count?”

Richie’s got a point, actually. “Yes?” Eddie ventures, after mulling it over for a half-minute. “This is—a weird arcade token dreamspace thing, not just a regular dream. I’ll remember this when I wake up.”

“Oh,” says Richie. He smiles. “I’ll count it, then.”

“You had better,” Eddie huffs, and kisses him again.

\--

When Eddie wakes up, the arcade token is warm against his skin. He smiles into his pillow, and breathes out easy.

Yeah. That counts.


	8. a dream i'm drowning in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Noah Gundersen's "Wake Me Up, I'm Drowning".
> 
> **content warnings:** canon-typical horror, a la Jade of the Orient, and therefore disturbing imagery with it. some somewhat minor injury to a major character. parental death in backstory. brief references to Eddie's leper and to Bev's father. Pennywise calling Ben a fatboy in a derisive manner.

Bev shows up at the library a few days later, grim determination set into her face, an engagement ring dangling around her neck, waiting for him in the lobby. When Eddie asks where Ben is, she jerks a thumb to the car parked right outside, where, sure enough, Ben’s in the driver’s seat, reading a book, and, surprisingly, Stan in the passenger seat looking _deeply_ uncomfortable. “He’s going to drive us to my old place, where my dad and I used to live,” she says. “I think—there’s something there.”

“Your old place?” Eddie asks, feeling more than a little queasy about the prospect. The last time he was in Bev’s old apartment, the one she shared with her father, there had been blood all over the bathroom. Like, _all over it_. Also, it had been just, like, a really bad place overall, he’d been about ready to squirm out of his skin the whole time, unsure whether it was over the danger Al Marsh posed or the blood in the bathroom or just the fear of It worming its way into Eddie’s heart.

“When we were getting our tokens,” she says, “I—saw something there.”

“Didn’t we all see something?” Eddie asks. “I saw the leper, Bill saw Georgie, Richie saw something he doesn’t talk about. Why’s this so special?”

Bev hesitates. “Because unlike with the rest of us,” she says, quietly, “I think It was telling me something. Stan, too, when he hit the synagogue last time.” Her manicured fingers tap against the wooden counter, and Eddie shoots the intern in charge of the counter an apologetic look, wishing quietly that Jeff were here. Jessica, he thinks this girl’s name is—Jessica Hill, senior at Derry High. Her eyes are fixed on him and Bev as if they’re characters in a play that’s enthralling her. “Have you ever heard of someone named Bob Gray?”

A cold chill runs down Eddie’s spine at the name, as the memory of the leper bubbles back up. _I’ll do it for free. Bobby does it for a dime, he will do it any time. That’s me, Eddie._ “Yeah,” he says, shaking off the fear that creeps up his spine, “the leper.”

“Not just that,” says Bev. “You’re working at a library, there’s public records there. Did you ever come across someone named Robert Gray? Did Richie ever mention him to you?”

_Not while we were making out and chatting over burgers, no._ Eddie doesn’t say that, though, just shakes his head instead. Unbidden, Richie’s words float back up to the surface of Eddie’s memory: the people who see the Deadlights get marked as potential hosts. Like Bev, and Stan. Like Richie had been. It was only the luck of the draw that Richie was the closest body—luck, and Richie wanting Eddie to live.

“This Robert Gray,” says Eddie, quietly, “was he—was he Pennywise, first, before It was?”

Bev shrugs, crossing her arms across her chest and huffing out a breath. “I don’t know,” she admits. “Maybe. I don’t think I can trust what It was showing me, and I know Stan doesn’t either. But I think there must’ve been _some_ truth to what I saw, and I’m hoping to find out for sure.”

“Well, okay,” says Eddie. “Why bring me along? I don’t—I don’t really know what I can do.”

“You can talk to Richie,” says Bev. “You’ve been talking to Richie. Maybe he could drop clues for us, something we can use to get him out of there.” She nods to the doors leading into the library’s study hall, and says, “Or we could go into the public records here. Did Mike ever get those digitized?”

“He was working on it, I think,” says Eddie. “He passed it over to Cathy when he resigned. So far she’s gotten pretty far ahead on it.”

“Can you check?” Bev asks.

“I have a phone and a pretty good data plan, I can try,” says Eddie. “Just let me get out of here first, I have to delegate a few things I was working on, then I’m all yours.”

So he leaves Bev at the counter with one very distracted Jessica, narrowly avoids Dash the intern on the way, and rushes to his office to save his work on his laptop. One of his other coworkers volunteers to take care of the repair guys when they come by later today, and the rest have been ruthlessly recruited into making the upcoming fundraiser look attractive to the townsfolk of Derry, so Eddie doesn’t feel too guilty about leaving them alone with the work. By the time he comes back to Bev, she’s struck up a chat with Jessica, who looks _fascinated_.

“—Mr. Kaspbrak’s like to you?” Jessica’s asking.

“Like family,” says Bev. “The closest thing I have.”

Eddie’s heart grows three sizes right there in his chest. The Losers, he realizes, are perhaps the closest thing he’s got to family too—the kind you’re supposed to have, that you would do anything for, and that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt would do anything for _you_ too. (Even die.) He coughs to get Bev’s attention, and says, “Okay, can we go now?”

They go. Bev hops into the passenger seat next to Ben. Eddie kicks a pebble into the sewer to warn Richie to stay in the clubhouse for a couple of hours, clambers into the backseat with Stan and says, “I didn’t think you’d come down here without everyone else around.”

“Neither did I,” Stan says. “But Bev asked.” He glances over at the sewer and says, “You’re sure Richie’s going to come talk to us at Bev’s old place?”

“I wasn’t telling him to talk to us,” says Eddie, as Ben starts the car up again and pulls away from the curb. “Today’s—not a good day, let’s say. I asked him to stay clear.”

“That’s not a bad choice,” says Stan. “I think we’d stand a better chance of finding something useful if Richie’s chaperone isn’t there to fuck with us.”

Bev twists around in her seat up front, and says, “You think he’ll stay away?”

Eddie hesitates. “I didn’t get an answer,” he admits. “But I know he’ll try.”

\--

Ben pulls up near the rundown, shuttered-up building that once upon a time used to be Bev’s dad’s home, and says, “Stan, do you wanna come with? You could stay out here and keep the car running.”

“Don’t tempt me,” says Stan. “I absolutely don’t want to be here, but—I have to come with.” He sounds so sure of this, and moreover, so _annoyed_ he’s so sure of this. Good old Stan, always wanting Derry to make even the barest lick of sense when Derry doesn’t want to. “This won’t work if all of us aren’t there.”

“All of us?” Eddie asks, briefly scanning the area for Bill, or Mike, or even Richie.

“All the Losers in town but Richie,” says Bev.

“All right,” says Ben, turning the engine off. “Let’s do this, then.”

Eddie digs out a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer from his fanny pack and presses it into Stan’s hands, after they climb out of the car. “You never know what you’re going to be picking up in there,” he says. “So, you know. Better safe than sorry.” He pulls another two out of the same pack, and tosses one to Bev, who’s grimly staring up at the building, and to Ben, who’s holding her hand and staring soulfully at her. “You two lovebirds too,” Eddie says. He glances up at the building, a broken and ramshackle shade of what it used to be, and shivers. “Who’s going first?”

“Me,” says Bev, striding forward. Ben falls in behind her, with Eddie and Stan taking up the rear. Eddie lingers on the final step for a moment, looking around for a red rose, a red balloon, something that’ll tell him who’s in charge right here and right now. This is one of _Its_ places, he remembers that.

He doesn’t see anything. He turns away, then, and heads inside.

(A red balloon rises out of an alleyway, a heartbeat after Eddie closes the door behind him, then floats up, up, up towards the sky.)

“Well,” says Ben, pleasantly, as Eddie catches up to them, “I hate this place on principle.”

“I know, it’s structurally unsound,” says Bev, amused, and Ben smiles at her. “You weren’t designing it, unfortunately.”

“I was thirteen, nobody’d have taken my portfolio then,” he says. “So—where do we go?”

As if to answer that, the arcade token resting against Eddie’s skin, under his clothes, grows warm. Eddie pulls it out, lets the token rest against his palm, and _sees_ the route in his head, clear as day: up the stairs, fourth door on the left side, MARSH not KERSH. He frowns. “Marsh, not Kersh?” he says, out loud, and Bev glances sideways at him.

Stan rocks back on his feet, shooting the door behind them an anxious look. But he sets his jaw, and says, “Your old man’s place?”

“Yeah,” says Bev. “When I went there, Mrs. Kersh was there, but—well, you know.” She pushes a few strands of hair back behind her ears, looking up the stairs. “Everyone go one at a time behind me and just—be careful. The stairs worked when I was last here, but without Its influence, I’m not sure if it can support all of us.”

“I’ll go behind Bev,” says Stan, suddenly.

“I’ll be right behind Stan,” says Eddie, and moves closer to Stan to clap him on the shoulder and give him a reassuring squeeze. “You’re braver than you think you are, Stanley,” he says. _You’re braver than you think,_ Richie’s voice echoes in the back of his head, and for a moment Eddie’s back in Neibolt, and Richie’s smiling at him, so sure of _Eddie_ of all people that it knocks him for a loop. No one’s believed in him like that. No one’s looked at him and called him _brave_ and, moreso, _encouraged_ it.

He blinks, and he’s back in the old apartment building, looking at Stan instead. Stan’s looking back, too, and there’s something in his eyes that’s almost _knowing_. That’s right, Stan had heard them too.

“Well,” says Ben, “I guess I’m right behind you guys.”

Marching orders thus decided, they head upstairs, with Eddie taking extra care to look where he’s stepping. The arcade token pulses warmly under his clothes, and he ends up fishing it out and holding it in his hand, watching it glow faintly, beating like a heart.

When he joins Bev on the second floor, she looks down at his token and blinks. “Mine’s not doing that,” she says, holding up her wrist. Sure enough, hanging from her bracelet is a single arcade token, very conspicuously not glowing.

Eddie thinks of roses, left just for him, and says, “Maybe the ritual worked in some way after all.” They’d believed it would defeat Pennywise. It hadn’t worked then, but maybe it had done something to the tokens that had been used. Maybe. Eddie’s flying blind here, hasn’t got a map or an instruction manual, just gut instinct.

“And here Ben, Stan, Bill and I took _flammable_ tokens,” says Bev. “More fool us.”

“My inhaler would be way harder to duplicate for you and Stan,” says Eddie, “and I’m not lugging a rock from the rock fight around.” He turns in one direction and says, as the glow grows brighter, “This way?”

“This way,” says Bev, as Stan climbs up to join them.

“Oh,” Stan says, with a look on his face like he’s tasted a rancid lemon in his lemonade, “yours glows now?”

“Apparently,” says Eddie. “I don’t know _why_.”

Ben, the last one to come up the stairs, steps carefully. The stairs creak anyway, and one near the top cracks before Ben can put his full weight on it. He pulls back, and the wood falls away. Then the next step. Then the next, and suddenly there’s a gap between Ben and them, and Ben steps back, eyes wide as he looks down at the pit where four of the stairs used to be. A _deep_ one, and Eddie’s heart lurches when he sees it. A fall from that height could kill, sure as spit.

“_Shit_,” Ben says, having apparently reached that same conclusion. He backs up as Bev pushes her way closer, holds her hand out. “I’m gonna jump,” he says, looking down and gulping audibly, because the gap is beginning to widen, yawning open wider and wider. Impossibly so, in fact.

“I’ll catch you,” says Bev. “_We’ll_ catch you.”

Ben’s jaw sets, and he nods. He backs up, and then runs as the stairs crumble under his feet, jumping off as the last of the wood rots away in some real-life time-lapse bullshit—eaten up by termites faster than it should be. Bev reaches out—

Stan grabs hold of Bev’s waist as she leans out, to steady her, and Ben’s hand just _about_ catches onto the edge of the last stair. Bev seizes his arm first, then Eddie, and finally Stan pulls at Bev’s waist.

Eddie wheezes out a strained curse, because god _damn_, Ben’s a fully-grown adult man and he weighs like one, but somehow, _somehow_, the three of them manage to pull Ben up and over the edge, back onto solid ground. Or solid floor. Before their eyes, the stairs rise back into place, as though they never cracked open.

“I hate this place,” Stan says, fervently. “I fucking _hate_ it.”

“You and me both,” Eddie mumbles, feeling the strain in his lungs and patting around for his inhaler instinctively. “Fuck. I _told_ Richie not to go near the place.”

“We’re clearly not dealing with Richie here,” says Stan, his face pale and drawn, “Richie’s jokes are pretty bad but he wouldn’t try to kill Ben.”

Ben picks a few splinters out of his hand, hissing quietly. “Eddie told Richie to stay away,” he says, as if putting the pieces together. “But he didn’t tell _It_ to stay away, did he. And when it heard that we were coming here, the four of us—”

“—it couldn’t resist,” says Bev, finishing Ben’s sentence. Eddie’s heart, and incidentally his lunch, scrabbles up into his throat at the very thought of having to go up against It _again_, the old fear scraping along his spine. He swallows the whole tangled mess back down.

“Okay, sit down, I can’t watch you fuck up your hand,” says Eddie, nudging Bev so she’ll step aside. “I’ve got a spare pair of tweezers and some alcohol, but I’m gonna need you to stay still while I patch you up.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” says Bev, taking Ben’s other hand and squeezing. He smiles back, and rests his arm on her shoulders, tucking her under his arm as Eddie works the splinters out of his hand.

Stan doesn’t sit down, just paces the floor while Eddie’s working. “This was _Its_ place,” he says, fussing with his sleeves, eyebrows knitting together like he’s turning something over in his head, analyzing the emerging patterns. “Richie didn’t come with us to clean up Beverly’s bathroom, we never hung out here. He doesn’t have a claim on this place, _we’ve_ never staked a claim, but It does.”

“We’re claiming territory now?” Ben asks.

Eddie thinks of the clubhouse, of Richie looking more settled in his own skin. “We claimed territory years ago,” he says. “When we won the rock fight.” Something fundamental in the world had shifted, then, when Henry and his goons slunk away, bleeding and concussed from the rocks the Losers had tossed at them. The Barrens had stopped seeming so easy to get lost in, had stopped looking so dangerous to the Losers. Had become _theirs_, in truth. _The Barrens is ours, that’s why Richie went there. The clubhouse is ours more than our homes ever were._

Derry in general, though—that’s _Its_ territory. Pennywise’s hunting grounds. The Losers had chased it out twice, they’ll chase it out again, but It’ll put up a fight the whole time. Has been putting up a fight, making sure they know when they’re trespassing, _taking one of theirs_. Motherfucking clown.

“If we’re in enemy territory now,” Bev says, and for a moment Eddie sees her at thirteen, yelling at them to stop fighting, shouting that they faced the thing _together_ and that was how they survived, “then we need to stick together. We’re stronger that way.”

Eddie pulls out the last splinter from Ben’s hand, and fishes around for cotton and alcohol in his fanny pack. _Easier said than done,_ he thinks, uneasy, disinfecting Ben’s wounds as much as he can.

\--

Walking through the broken-down shade of Bev’s old apartment building, as it turns out, is barely any better than wading through the sewers of Derry. Sure, there’s no grey water up here, but the wood creaks under their feet and the rats scurry around them, and is that really any better?

Another rat squeaks on past. Eddie very discreetly grabs hold of Stan, his other hand holding the arcade token. It’s glowing brightly now, so bright that Eddie’s surprised it’s not trying to burn a hole in his hand.

“Here,” says Bev, stopping at a door with MARSH written on the plaque. “This was where she and I talked, where I saw the picture with her father. I saw her father—I saw _Pennywise_ just down the hall.” She nods towards the end of the hall, and says, “There was a door there, and when it swung open I saw—It. Or not _just_ It, but the man that It used as a host. I’m sure of it.”

Ol’ Bobby Gray, Eddie thinks. Try as he might, when he thinks the name, he only sees the leper’s noseless, rotting face. And he only sees a fire exit at the end of the hall, the light behind the sign long since burned out. Behind that door is, most likely, if It isn’t messing with them, the fire escape he and the other boys used to leave the building, so long ago, creeping out of Bev’s apartment.

Ben doesn’t bother with the doorknob, just eases the door open.

The smell of rot all but explodes out of the room. Bev steps back, more out of shock than anything as her hand claps over her mouth and nose, and Eddie doesn’t blame her for that. God, it _reeks_ in there. 

There had been a time back in college, when Eddie’s first roommate had accidentally left some meat out to rot too long in their dorm, for reasons Eddie’s forgotten now. The smell had stuck to the counter, persistent even when Eddie tried to chase the scent away with perfume and air freshener. It had lasted far longer than the roommate did, and eventually Eddie had to move out and get a different dorm.

The too-sweet, rotten-eggs reek that’s just burst out of Bev’s dad’s old apartment is about a thousand times worse than that. Eddie doesn’t doubt that were Richie here, he’d have yartzed his guts up, but as things stand, it looks like either Stan or Eddie himself might just do the honors instead. Eddie might, because—because under the stench of rotting meat, he smells cologne. Shitty cologne. _Richie’s_ cologne.

Ben pulls his shirt up over the lower half of his face. “Did this happen last time?” he asks.

“Yeah, _no_,” says Bev, her face tinged faintly green.

Ben’s first over the threshold, keeping his shirt pressed firmly over his mouth and nose. Bev takes one step forward before the door _slams_ closed on them, and she’s the first one to fling herself at the door, shouting, “Ben! _Ben!_”

Eddie swears, grabs hold of the doorknob and—_ow_, fuck, _shit_, that’s too fucking _hot_. He yanks his hand back and stares, horrified, at the imprint of the doorknob burned into his skin.

Stan whips around first, and steps in front of Eddie. Eddie’s about to ask him what the fuck is going on when the fire exit opens up and—and _things_ rush through: human heads with spider-like legs sprouting out of their eyes and cheeks, winged grey things that look and cry like dead, barely-formed babies, eyeballs slithering along the floor like snakes with bloody nerves trailing behind them, dead puppies with their exposed and rotting guts dragging on the floor hauling their asses towards them with hunger in their maggot-ridden eyes.

“Oh, fuck!” Bev curses, and steps forward to start angrily kicking as the swarm descends on them.

Eddie ducks his head to protect his face from the things and says, “Oh god oh god oh my fucking _god_—”

There’s the sound of Stan swatting something out of the air, and a wet noise. “Oh, that’s disgusting,” says Stan, faintly.

Eddie peeks, just in time to see Stan upending his bottle of hand sanitizer onto his hand. Also just in time to see one of the winged fetuses try to divebomb him, and Eddie instinctively bats it away.

Ben’s scream echoes from inside the room. Eddie turns on his heel, tries not to think about what he and Bev and Stan might be squashing under their feet, and rushes to the door. He tentatively touches only the very tip of his pinky finger to the doorknob.

It _burns_.

He yanks it back with a curse, then knocks his fist against the door with a curse. Ben’s in there. He can’t leave him there, he _can’t_, something’s in there with him and it’s _hurting him_. “We’re coming to get you, Ben!” he shouts. Then he backs up and slams into the door, shoulder-first. Then again, with Bev’s weight behind it. Then again, with Stan and Bev.

Then, as suddenly as they came, the monstrosities drop to the floor. The door swings open, and all three of them tumble through, graceless and clumsy. “_Ow,_” Eddie groans, with the weight of two fully-grown adults on his back. “Ow, _fuck_—”

He looks up and blinks.

Richie’s there. Richie, with white paint fading from his face, his glasses in Ben’s hand, his eyes wide and horrified, with Ben holding him by the wrist. _Richie,_ and Eddie knows it’s him because It would never bother to look like that, guilty and scared beyond belief. Ben’s taken his glasses off his face, and there’s blood dripping down Ben’s forearm where—

—where three long gashes are.

“Ben!” Bev shouts. “Oh my god—Richie, what—”

“Ben, you gotta let go,” Richie says. “I—I can’t stay—”

“Rich,” says Ben, desperately, “Richie, it’s okay, it’s fine, it wasn’t you—”

Richie yanks his hand back and away from Ben, making a wounded, desperate noise as he backs up, scooting back on his ass. Stan’s on him in an instant, pushing past Eddie and Bev to grab hold of Richie’s arm this time, and Richie goes still and quiet, eyes flickering gold. Out in the hallway, the monsters start to stir. Wings beat sluggishly, squashed eyeballs struggle towards the open doorway.

Eddie grabs Richie’s other hand, and the monsters drop back to the floor, dead. The blue seeps back into Richie’s eyes, and the white paint flakes off his skin. “Hey,” Eddie says, snapping the fingers of his free hand in front of Richie’s pale face, “hey, Richie, _hey._”

“Bev, that you?” Richie asks, with a ghost of his old humor in his voice.

“You fuckin’ _wish_, Trashmouth.”

Bev’s already at Ben’s side, stripping off her own jacket and tearing the sleeve off to wrap around his arm. The gashes are still there, but when Eddie turns his head to ask, Ben says, “It looks worse than it actually is. You didn’t go too deep.”

Richie’s face crumples. “Ben,” he says, then stops, and curls up. Eddie shifts his grip so he’s loosely holding Richie’s hand, and Stan’s hand travels up to settle on Richie’s shoulder instead, squeezing once, reassuringly. Neither of them look at the open wound in the middle of Richie’s chest, the blood that’s crusted around it. “How bad does it look? I can’t see it.”

“Not that bad,” says Ben.

“Don’t bullshit me,” says Richie. “Bev?”

Beverly hesitates as she ties off the makeshift bandage, then sighs. “It looks pretty bad,” she admits. “But it’s fine, we’re fine. Anyone asks, a raccoon scratched him up.”

Richie laughs, at that, a short and startled thing escaping like a bird from a child’s grasp. Eddie squeezes his hand lightly, and knocks his knee against Richie’s. “Do you want to go?” Eddie asks.

Richie runs his teeth over his lower lip. They look reassuringly human. “I can’t stay long, I don’t wanna hurt any of you more than I already have,” he says. “But fuck, I don’t—I don’t wanna go either, it’s been way too long.” He turns to look at Stan and says, with fake reproach in his voice, “Especially you, Stanley! You never _call_ me back anymore, you know, it’s breaking my heart.”

“Yeah, it’s over between us, Rich, sorry,” says Stan, deadpan. “I’d say thanks for the good times, but honestly I faked it every time.”

“_Ouch_,” says Richie, and just like that Eddie relaxes, because if Richie’s making terrible jokes about his sex life, then he’s okay. They’re okay. “I’m already dead, stop kicking me while I’m down.”

And _that_ kills what little joy had been teased out into the atmosphere. Eddie’s heart sinks into his stomach at the memory, his grip on Richie’s hand tightening. Stan’s face goes from vaguely amused to _devastated_, the grief written so clearly across his face that he looks as old as they joked he was. Ben shakes his head, brows furrowing, and Bev’s lips press together into a thin line.

“Beep beep, Richie,” she says.

“I can’t joke about my own death?” Richie asks.

(_blood soaks through his fingers through his jacket stains the wedding ring there’s so much of it how can the human body hold so much blood oh god no hey Richie shhh Richie you’re gonna be okay we’re gonna be okay look at me man look at me what do you want to say what—_)

“We had to _watch_ you die,” says Stan, testy enough that Eddie freezes a little. So does Richie, almost imperceptibly so if not for Eddie’s hand on his arm. Then Stan pauses, and scrubs a hand over his face, and says in a softer voice, “I know it sounds a little fucked up, but your dying was _incredibly_ traumatic. For us and for you.”

Richie doesn’t say anything, but he shakes his head, and turns to look at Eddie instead. “I can think of more traumatic shit than that, personally,” he says, softly. Then he huffs out a breath and says, “Fine. Okay. Now can we pretend I didn’t kill the mood?”

“Too late,” says Eddie. “Mood’s dead, and you killed it. Hope you’re fucking proud of yourself, Trashmouth.”

“I’ll never be able to live with the guilt,” says Richie, solemnly. Then he snickers, which kills that bit.

“Actually, Rich,” says Bev, cutting in before Eddie can shoot back at him, “how much _do_ you know? About Its history, I mean.” Her eyes meet Richie’s, and she says, with no fear in her voice, “About Bob Gray.”

“Pennywise,” says Richie. “The first one.” He hunches in on himself, pulls a knee up to his chest and says, “Yeah, I know about him. It talked about him a few times.”

“How much can you tell us, Rich?” Ben asks.

Richie looks up, and Eddie sees flecks of gold in his eyes. “I don’t know,” he says, and thank god, he still sounds like himself, and his eyes are still mostly blue, mostly human. “It could interrupt at any moment if it thinks I’m saying too much, but how about this—I’ll give a sketch, but it’s up to you guys to fill the rest of it in?”

That’s not really ideal, but—well, beggars can’t be choosers, and all that. And a sketch of a picture straight from the source is better than nothing. Eddie shrugs, says, “I’ll take that deal. Bev?”

“A start’s good enough for me,” says Bev.

“And me,” says Ben. “We’ll put the rest of it together from there.”

Stan doesn’t say anything, but he nods.

Richie cracks his neck from side to side, then breathes out slow. “All right,” he says, “gather ‘round, folks, and I’ll tell you a story about a clown and his daughter…”

\--

Once upon a time there was a circus, and in that circus lived a clown that danced and his daughter.

The clown wished to retire from the circus life, and to take his daughter with him, but the daughter had grown up with the Big Top and the razzle-dazzle of the life and had fallen in love with it. The circus was in her blood, and she loved it with all of her heart. The clown, however, had fallen out of love with the circus, as these things go, and only wished now to be left in peace, left alone with his daughter to live without worry of where their next meals would be coming from, of where they would be going next and if they would be able to stay there. He knew that little girls needed something more stable than the Big Top, something steadier than the trapeze swing.

So, against her protests, the clown decided that the next town they would stop at was the one they would finally live in. This town was a little thriving town named Derry, where the Kenduskeag River ran, where they used to trap beavers and disappear in the winters, where monsters lived and lurked in the darkness and talked to little girls like the clown’s daughter through the bubbling river. (Shut up, Eddie, I’m trying to be dramatic here, _Jesus._ Lemme tell the fucking story. Anyway.)

So it was that Pennywise the Dancing Clown’s final shows took place in Derry. On the first day of his last few weeks, though, something terrible happened: his daughter, the most precious thing in the world to him, disappeared.

It broke her father, the clown. He refused to perform, and instead recruited some of his friends from the circus to help him look for his daughter: the strongman and the acrobat, clever and brave and so fucking foolish, when you really think about it. But they didn’t know about the monster, and neither did the clown. They didn’t know the monster had lured the daughter away, and they certainly didn’t know that the clown’s stubborn efforts to find her had caught the monster’s attention. The monster lurked in their shadows for a time, watching and waiting, and little by little grew…_fond_ of the clown. As fond as It could get, really, which just means it wanted him for something other than food.

It was an old monster, you see. (I _know_ we know that already, but I’m trying to tell the story here, Eds.) It was wearing out the form it lived in, and it needed something new. Something that could contain it. And the three of them could, it thought. One of the three, anyway, because they had a touch of _fate_ about them.

(Do not fucking ask me how It knew. I have no idea either. Someone give me my glasses back, I don’t know who’s asking what.)

The clown was no longer dancing, the monster saw. This was unacceptable. The monster knew the clown could dance, that was why it was interested in him in the first place. It wanted to dance like the clown did. It _wanted_, it wanted so much it would kill for it. And it could spare someone for it, for it had a plan.

The clown, the acrobat, and the strongman, in the meantime, looked for the clown’s daughter. They found a trail of crumbs—_figurative_ crumbs, Eddie, okay—that led them to a house built over a well.

...they got the girl out, the three of them working together. But they didn’t get the clown out. At the last minute, the monster had taken the clown, and he told them to run. He told them to get out of there, and he would be just behind them, he promised. He promised his little girl he’d just be a moment, and he’d join her.

He was lying. It got him. And it got what it wanted.

They never found his body. They _looked_, but the only thing they ever found of him was the clown’s white gloves. And blood. Quite a lot of blood, too much to survive the loss. And the bones of children, too.

And twenty-seven years later, the little girl, who was not so little anymore, heard stories about a clown in the darkness, with a red balloon, inviting little boys and little girls to the house that had been built on the well. And twenty-seven years after _that_, this same grown-up little girl heard her father’s voice speaking to her through the pipes. He told her: come down, sweetheart. Come down to the river, down to the darkness. Come play with your father.

She came.

And the monster that used to be her father, or that was never her father but was wearing his face, a face she loved and trusted implicitly and above even her own instincts—

Well. I think you can guess, Bev my dear, how that ended.

\--

“She floated,” says Bev, her voice tearing through the blanket of horrified silence that’s fallen over them. Eddie can picture it in his head, somehow: an old woman walking into the darkness, following her father’s voice to meet her strange death.

Richie nods. At some point during the story, Ben had passed his glasses back to him, but he hasn’t put them on just yet. “Like her father before her,” he says, quoting but not quite sliding into a Voice. “I’m—I don’t know if I can say more, guys. I’m already pushing it just sticking around here. It’s a little,” and he winces, as if dealing with the remnants of a painful migraine, “tetchy. I _really_ need to go.”

“If this is about It trying to eat me,” Ben says, “that wasn’t you, I know it wasn’t you. I don’t blame you. None of us do, Rich.”

Richie cocks his head to the side and says, “What happens if **there’s nothing left of _your old_ friend, fatboy**—_shit!_” He yanks his hands away then, scrambling backward. “Don’t,” he says, when Eddie starts forward, “don’t, _don’t_, Eds, I don’t wanna hurt you.” His eyes flick from Eddie to the others, fear in his eyes as he backs away, the color draining back out of his skin. “Let me go,” he says. “I’ll come back, I promise.”

Eddie starts forward again, but Bev’s fingers hook around his elbow and reel him away. “_Rich_,” he says, voice cracking.

Richie backs up towards the kitchen, towards the darkness. He hesitates a moment, and Eddie sees his hand drifting slowly upward, reaching, _reaching_, frills sprouting from the sleeve of his leather jacket, nails growing sharp as claws—

Richie yanks his hand back like he’s burned it, and says, softly, “I _promise._” Then he steps back into the darkness, and the long-dead lightbulbs flicker so brightly that for a moment Eddie has to cover his eyes. Then they burn back out, and—

—there’s nothing there.

Well. Not _nothing_, because lying on the floor is a single red rose.


	9. do you really think that anybody will notice?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Wintersleep's "Search Party".
> 
> **content warnings:** bad parenting from Stan's father, probably counts as emotional abuse. canon-typical horror. Pennywise being its own warning, again. references to suicide attempt.

“Fuck,” says Stan, succinctly, as the four of them troop out of the building. “And we still have to head to the synagogue after this.”

“Do we have to?” Eddie asks.

“I wish we didn’t,” says Stan, “but I—” He pauses, then frowns, crossing his arms and idly scratching over his forearm, where a scar stretches over his wrist. “I just have a feeling,” he says, sounding more annoyed than anything. Typical Stan. Never did like having to just go on feelings.

“Bad or good?” Bev asks, as Ben leans against her. She turns to him then and murmurs something in his ear, and Ben gives her a slight nod. “I’ll drive us there,” she says again, out loud. “After what happened in there—well, Ben’s not going to drive.”

“We’re still heading in the synagogue together, though,” says Ben. “Do you still know anyone there?”

Stan shakes his head, and says, “Almost everyone I knew from synagogue moved away from Derry years ago. Or died.” He absently picks at the hem of his sleeves, fussing them back into order, and says, “Unless—Eddie, you’re the one who moved here, do you by any chance happen to know anyone who could go to synagogue?”

Eddie racks his memory, then shakes his head. “No, sorry, just you,” he says. “But you were the rabbi’s son. That counts for something.”

“Not much,” says Stan, sounding so—_tired_ all of a sudden. Eddie remembers, all of a sudden, coming over sometimes when they were younger, before Georgie disappeared. Stan used to worry so much about living up to his father’s expectations, about setting an example as the rabbi’s son to the other children. _Not a good one, then,_ Richie had said once, his big mouth running off again, and Eddie had shushed him frantically.

Stan’s father meant well. Parents usually do, Eddie knows that his mother certainly just wanted him to be safe and protected from all harm. That doesn’t mean they don’t hurt their kids anyway, but it just means—they don’t see the scars left behind.

“We’ll back you up,” Bev says, snapping Eddie out of his thoughts, “if you’re worried It might still take an interest.”

“We’re not leaving you alone again, Stan,” says Ben, with conviction.

Stan shakes his head. “I know, it’s just that I don’t have very good memories of the place,” he says, “but you know what? I’m fine. I can deal with bad memories.”

“Would anyone be inside the synagogue right now?” Ben asks, as Bev maneuvers him over to the passenger door. He goes without complaint, and when he does wince, Bev leans down to catch his lips in a brief kiss. “It’s not Saturday.”

The rose is heavy in Eddie’s hand, suddenly. He tries not to think about the scrape of stubble on his skin, about counting Richie’s freckles in an empty Hollywood bar, about a cold hand pressing into his and warming, little by little, under his skin.

“Just the rabbi right now, probably,” says Stan. “Maybe a few people praying alone, at this time of day. There’s nothing really happening right now.” He pauses. “Or at least nothing should be,” he says.

“It’s gonna be weird if we all go in and we’re not Jewish, huh?” Eddie says.

“Not really, people will be a little more shocked by Ben bleeding through his bandages than by _goyim_ swinging by out of curiosity,” says Stan. “Just look nonthreatening and no one will look twice, especially after I vouch for you. Which reminds me: Ben? Don’t go near anything, I do not want you to get in trouble with the rabbi, whoever he is.”

“Got it,” says Ben.

Bev slides into the driver’s seat, and that leaves the backseat for Eddie and Stan. For a while as she drives away from the boarded-up apartment building, no one says a word. At most, Ben rests his hand on the center console, an invitation for her to take it if she needs to.

Eddie finds himself staring down at the rose, rubbing his thumb lightly over a red petal. It’s fresh, but the thorns have been cut off with a careful hand. Like Richie didn’t want him to slice his thumb open handling it, like he bought it from a flower shop instead of just picking it from a rosebush—he’s seen a couple in the Barrens, he knows Richie could just walk a couple steps out from the clubhouse and pull a few.

It’s sweet of him. Eddie would not trust roses from the Barrens. God knows what he’d pick up from those things. He’d much rather have roses from a florist like Maggie Tozier was.

He says to Stan, quietly, looking up from his rose, “What did you see? In the synagogue. You never really said anything about it, we just assumed it was the woman from your painting.”

“I wish it was,” says Stan, leaning his head against the headrest. “Her, I could’ve dealt with. I wouldn’t have been happy to, but I could’ve dealt with her. No, what I saw was—closer to what Beverly saw, I guess. It’s hard to explain, it was—_strange_.” He glances at Bev, who’s placed her hand on Ben’s on the center console, then looks back at Eddie.

“I got this rose from my undead boyfriend who lives in the sewers,” says Eddie. “We’ve long since passed strange, Stan. We’re in Weirdsville now.”

The word startles a wet-sounding laugh out of Stan. “You’ve been hanging around him too long,” he says, and Eddie doesn’t have to ask who he means. Weirdsville is a _Richie_ thing to say, usually with a newscaster accent, _strange things are happening in Weirdsville, Maine tonight, more at eleven!_ “All right. I’ll try.” He drums his shaking fingers against his thigh, and begins: “So I’d put off looking for my token until after you came back drenched in leper puke, and I knew I’d have to go at least _look_…”

\--

The synagogue looked the same as it did in Stan’s memory, as he walked up to it. A little less imposing, perhaps, now that he was an adult, but still the same. The only thing that had really changed was what was written on the sign outside, an announcement for Robin Goldstein’s Bat Mitzvah this coming Saturday. Stan stood outside near the sign for a long moment, considering the merits of simply turning on his heel and walking the fuck away, getting in his car, and leaving Derry behind. Certainly there were quite a lot to mull over.

Patty, though. Patty would be disappointed in him. Would definitely be very unhappy if he told her what Mike had told them: that fighting It the first time had left something in their heads that would kill them, sure as spit, if they didn’t finish this _now_, this very year, this very week. He could not bring himself to disappoint her, not again. She’d cried enough.

And, hell, if he didn’t stay Richie would probably fucking implode just being around Eddie. Or kill himself via alcohol poisoning before the clown could get them.

So. Stan tucked his hands into the pockets of his nice, sensible cardigan and walked up the stairs, then pushed the doors to the synagogue open.

The interior hadn’t changed either, strangely empty as it was. Here was the hall where visitors could be received, unchanged from when his father took over the position of rabbi over three decades ago. There was the door to the synagogue’s main hall where Stan’s disaster of a Bar Mitzvah had taken place. He pushed that door open and saw—well, no one there. For a moment, though, he imagined it: himself on the raised podium, the microphone in his sweating hand, looking up at his father with steel in his spine for what felt like the first time in his life ever. Richie had been sitting in one of the pews, a spare kippah tucked over his hair, and the pride in his eyes was magnified a hundred times over by the size and thickness of his glasses.

“Thanks for showing up, Richie,” Stan murmured to himself. Then he closed the door. He would not find his token there, he figured, but maybe—the rabbi’s office.

His feet still knew the way, somehow. The wonders of muscle memory, Stan supposed. There were other things to worry over, anyway, like why the synagogue seemed so _empty_. There should’ve been at least a couple other people around—assistants, students of the Torah, _anyone_, the synagogue was never truly empty in Stan’s memory. At least someone had to be here to keep an eye on things. Fucking Derry and its fucking vandals used to try and make the synagogue a regular target, after all, and there was no reason to believe that had changed even now.

He came to the door of the rabbi’s office with his heart pounding hard against his chest. It was here. It was here, he knew this in his bones. _You should’ve run,_ he thought. _You should’ve died in the bath, you should’ve spared everyone the trouble. You’re not just scared, Stan, you’re fucking terrified because you know that behind door number one is a crack in the universe, a flaw in the system. You’ve known this since the woman in the painting grew fucking legs and tried to chew your face off._

He wanted to run. He wanted so, so badly to run, and hide. Buenos Aires wasn’t far enough from Derry, fucking _Antarctica_ wasn’t far enough. The only place far enough was the country on the other side of everything, the nothingness afterward. If there was nothing. If it was far enough.

He could imagine it in full color: turning away, getting in a car, and just booking it far away from Derry as fast as possible. He could also see how that would end: him in a bathtub, with no one there to pull him out, and the Losers’ dead bodies scattered all over a dark, damp cave.

That could not happen. Stan might be a coward, but he _could not_ let his friends die to buy him twenty years’ worth of time. The rest of Derry could go hang for all he cared, but not the Losers. Not the first family he ever made himself.

He sucked in a breath to steady himself. “You can do this, Uris,” he said. “You did this at thirteen scared shitless. You can do this now.”

He pushed the door open.

The only thing that waited for him was his father’s office. It was the same as always: dim, neat, well-organized, with the only thing out of place being the crooked painting of the woman, and a book on a chair. Stan stepped closer, slowly, then picked the book up and flipped it open.

His old bird album. Fuck, he—he _remembered_ this, he realized, suddenly. His father had looked over the album he’d carefully curated, the birds he’d spotted and painstakingly catalogued, and Stan had thought maybe, just maybe—his father liked birds, too. Surely he would be proud. Stan had _completed_ the album, after all.

His father had looked the album over, said it was an impressive task—but not the one Stan was supposed to _do_. Then he’d thrown it into the trash can, and told Stan in no uncertain terms that he needed to grow up and leave behind childish things. He was going to be a man soon. He was supposed to have left behind childish things long ago.

Well, Stan was a man now, older and more tired and still as scared as he was when he was thirteen. Probably moreso, now. He hadn’t done as good a job at leaving behind childish things as he had hoped, because the shadow of himself at thirteen still hung over him: his promise, and the memory of It.

He tucked the bird-book into a pocket, and kept his gaze firmly away from the crooked painting. It didn’t matter if the painting was crooked. It didn’t. It _didn’t_. Nothing would happen if he just—walked out the door and left it alone. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Everything would be just fine, there was nothing wrong here, other than that fucking clown, and so far besides the mess with the fortune cookies (_So Glad You All Could Make It_, fucking _hellclown_) It hadn’t even showed up that much.

It didn’t matter. It didn’t. _It didn’t_.

His hand was already on the doorknob before he stopped. Then he turned on his heel and stalked towards the painting, trying to look at a speck in its dark background rather than the woman herself. He just—He just needed to straighten it out, push it just a little to the left—

His eyes flicked, almost involuntarily, to the woman.

Only she _wasn’t_ the same woman, not anymore. She wasn’t even a woman.

Stan startled at the sight of a little girl, holding a red balloon, looking sadly at him. Her eyes were brown and watery, as though she had cried just before sitting for this painting. She wore a black dress with frills along her skirt and lacy sleeves, and her hair was a blonde mop combed carefully back, as though for a formal event. Her black blouse was torn over her heart, showing a white undershirt. Like she was mourning someone, Stan thought, but—why? How did he know this? Why did this girl seem almost familiar to him? He’d never met this girl in his life. Right?

(_but you do know her Stanley don’t you you’ve got an idea who she is_)

Right?

She—She wasn’t made of brushstrokes anymore. Those brown eyes of hers were _swimming_ with sadness, the sort that said she had seen things beyond her apparent twelve years of age. Her blouse wasn’t just the only thing torn about her anymore, her sleeves had been shredded, her skirt bloodied and dirtied as though she had been playing in the mud, and her shoes squelched as she stepped forward, greywater spilling out from them. The balloon floated above her head, swaying with a nonexistent wind. “I would’ve done anything too,” she said, softly, stepping forward, and her voice was, illogically, a man’s voice. Pennywise’s voice, but not _Its_. “She was my little girl. I wanted her to grow up to be a woman, tall and strong. I would’ve done anything for her. I did. God help me, I did.” The girl tilted her head. “Do you want to make a deal, Stanley?” she whispered in that illogical voice, reaching her hand out, and out of the darkness came a thousand small hands.

Stan screamed, turned the painting over and slammed it into the wall hard enough that it left a crack in the plaster. Then he ran out the door, as fast as he could go. His car was still in the parking lot, he could get in it now and take his chances—

He knocked into a very tall, and very surprised Richie Tozier, instead. The two of them fell hard and sprawled out on the floor of the lobby, an undignified mess of limbs.

“Stanley?” Richie asked, as Stan adjusted himself. “What—Hey, you okay? Did you find your token yet?”

“I have to get out of Derry,” Stan said.

“Oh,” said Richie. “Right.” His hand caught Stan’s wrist, grip firm but not so tight it hurt. “Stan,” he said. “We’re all—I hate that I’m the one who’s gotta say this because like, ten minutes ago I was gonna book it to Reno—”

“That’s a smart choice,” said Stan. “I was thinking the Arctic. Fucking cold over there but maybe it’d be far enough.”

“Fuck the Arctic, man, people died there,” said Richie.

“Better the Arctic than _Derry_,” said Stan. “You don’t—You don’t understand, I don’t think I can _do this_. I’m a coward, Rich, I’m too scared to go down to the sewers and face—_It_. Not again. I don’t know if I can survive it.”

“Hey, no, hey, budge up a bit,” said Richie, pushing Stanley up and off him. Stan went, and Richie sat up, brushing dust off his stupid expensive-looking leather jacket. “We’re all fucking scared, Stan. I _just_ told you I was about to buy out and head to Reno. But I stopped by here, and I—d’you remember your Bar Mitzvah?”

“Yeah, that was a disaster,” said Stan, running a hand through his hair.

“I didn’t think it was,” said Richie, his tone low as if he was confessing something. A corner of his mouth had quirked upward, in a small smile, like he was letting Stan in on the joke. “When you told your dad off and dropped that mic, why, I thought you were the coolest fucking person in the entire synagogue.” His hand found Stan’s shoulder and squeezed, gentle and firm. People liked to say Stan, at thirteen, was old for his age and Richie was too damn gleefully childish to hang out with, but Stan had seen Richie with Eddie. There was an _empathy_ inside Richie, beyond the impressions and the dick jokes, that meant sometimes Richie knew just what to say to calm someone down. Or rile them up to the point of distraction. “You remember what you said?” Richie asked now.

“I’m a Loser,” said Stan, the words coming back to him after all these years. “And I always fucking will be.”

“Yeah,” said Richie. He patted Stan on the shoulder, then got to his feet. “Now come on, they’re probably having an orgy back at the townhouse right now.”

“You fucking asshole,” said Stan, fondly, pushing himself up to his feet as well. “Let’s go talk to Mike. We’ve got the tokens now, we can wait up on them at the library.”

\--

“And, well,” says Stan, as Bev carefully parks them near the synagogue, “you know what happened at the library.”

Eddie does know, remembers with a horrifying clarity: Bowers’ body with an axe buried in his head, Richie heaving his guts up onto the floor, Stan helping Mike up and trying not to look. “Do you think we’re in for a repeat performance if we walk in there?” he asks, pushing his train of thought into a different, less bloody track.

“No,” says Stan. “No.” He hesitates for a moment, then looks down at his sleeves and starts to fuss with them, pulling them up over the scars on his wrists. “Richie’s not going for an encore performance, I’m sure,” he says.

Hopefully Richie’s in charge. “So what do you think you’re gonna find there?” Ben asks from the front seat. His hand is still linked with Bev’s. It’s a little jealousy-inducing, yeah, because Eddie’s boyfriend lives in the goddamn sewers and Ben and Bev are so fucking _easy_ around each other, out of months of cohabitation. Meanwhile Eddie can’t even say _I love you_ to his actual boyfriend who _died for him_, because of trauma or some shit.

Fucking trauma.

“Some answers,” says Stan. “Bev’s old place didn’t have anything concrete, but—there might be records there. We kept a lot of records, there could be a death certificate on there.”

“You think Pennywise was Jewish?” Bev asks.

“I think his daughter was, at least,” says Stan. “Her blouse was torn, like in mourning. It’s traditional to rend your clothes when you get the news of a loved one’s death.”

Eddie remembers, suddenly: Stan had deliberately torn his right sleeve, after Neibolt. He hadn’t thought much about it, since all their clothes were fucked up as hell after Neibolt (and Eddie’s were spattered with Richie’s blood), but now he thinks—well. Nothing like seeing your best friend’s cooling corpse to knock the news of his death home.

They climb out of the car, and Eddie takes Ben from Bev for a while, as she and Stan climb up the stairs. “The Deadlights club,” he mutters.

Ben slants his gaze over to Eddie. “You think that’s how Stan seems to just—know things, sometimes?” he asks. “The Deadlights?”

“No,” says Eddie. “No, he knew stuff before It tried to eat him.” He waves a hand as he and Ben make their slow, lurching way up the steps to the synagogue, following in Bev and Stan’s footsteps. “He always sort of—knew where to find the rarest birds, without asking anyone. And Richie used to ask Stan for help whenever his glasses got lost, because Stan would always find them first.” He pauses, thinking back now to some of the things Stan’s said, since leaving Derry the second time. “I think whatever he had before,” he says, “it got—stronger, after the Deadlights. Clearer, maybe. That’s why he’s got more of an idea where to go than we do.” _And why he nearly killed himself rather than go back._

“What about you?” Ben asks. “You’ve got a token, and Richie managed to get to you first, but you never saw the Deadlights.”

Eddie hesitates a moment. Then he says, “You heard him, in the cistern.”

Ben doesn’t say a word, but his eyes shine with sympathy and, moreover, _understanding_. Because he’s been there, Eddie knows. Because he’s felt that yawning ache in his chest, felt his heart crack with the pain of _almost_. “Yeah,” he says. “You think that’s why?”

“It’s why I moved here,” says Eddie. “I know you guys would’ve done the same, Mike was about to—”

“It wasn’t exactly a sacrifice for you, though,” says Ben.

“Yeah,” says Eddie. “Because I don’t have a job or a wife. Or much of a life left in New York.” Then he pauses, and says, with all the hushed tones of a confession, “And I—wanted to be close to him. Kinda fucked up, right? Wanting to be in Derry?”

“Not really,” says Ben. “It’s Richie. You two have always been kinda,” he pauses, then spins two fingers around in a circle.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Eddie asks.

“You guys orbit each other,” Ben says. “Where one of you goes the other tends to go too. We had to stop you from walking right back into the sinkhole on Neibolt, remember? You just—You _look_ for him, actively.” He leans his weight a little more on Eddie as Eddie shoves the doors to the synagogue open, just in time to see Bev and Stan talking quietly with a volunteer at the desk. As Eddie watches, a few men wearing kippahs and prayer shawls walk past, arguing furiously but quietly over something. “Not even Mike would do that,” says Ben, “because Mike’s careful. He’d talk to Richie through dreams, and he’d leave meals at sewers, because he loves him, but he wouldn’t do what you’re doing. He doesn’t orbit Richie the same way you do.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything, just maneuvers Ben to a nearby bench. No wonder Bev fell in love with Ben through his poetry, he just came up with some astronomy shit to describe his two best friends’ relationship. “You should be the writer,” he says. “Hell, you know what? You should ghostwrite for Bill.”

“Nah,” says Ben. “Not much of a horror guy.” He holds his arm gingerly across his chest, wincing a little, but it looks like the bleeding’s stopped for now, the makeshift bandage hasn’t gotten any darker. Good on Bev for thinking fast. “I guess I just answered my own question, huh?” he says, quietly.

“I guess you did,” says Eddie. “Plus I’m nearer. New York’s just a seven-hour drive to Bangor if traffic’s good and you take the I-95. Stan’s in Atlanta and that’s, what, fourteen hours without a break?”

“That’s one factor,” Ben allows, “but you’re the one he confessed to. I’m pretty sure that’s a huge factor too.” He glances over at Bev, and says, “You love him, and he loves you. That’s a magic all by itself.”

“You sound like a Hallmark movie,” Eddie says. “You’re sure you don’t want to write books instead?”

“Buildings are a lot easier than books, I’ve found,” says Ben, just as Stan breaks away from Bev and the volunteer to walk over to them. “Hey, are they gonna let us look?”

“Just me,” says Stan. “But I can have you guys outside, and I’d rather have that much, so—”

“Of course,” says Eddie. “Yeah, just scream for help if you need us.” Hopefully, he won’t.

\--

Once, a very long time ago, a young boy made a home for his friends underground. He made it with love and care, sealed up the holes and kept the water out, built it to hold seven small bodies full of hormones coexisting in the same space. Richie had always felt that there was a little bit of magic to the clubhouse, just because of how much love Ben put into the whole endeavor.

He knows there still is, now, because the second he sets foot in it again It retreats to the back of his head, staying quiet as Richie descends the ladder to the floor. Even now, he can feel Ben’s innocent love for all his friends wrap around his shoulders like a warm blanket.

God, Ben. _Ben._ Fuck, he’d hurt him.

He drops to the floor and looks up at the trapdoor. The clubhouse is much, much bigger than it had been when Richie was last here, and he doesn’t think that’s a consequence of Ben’s magic. No, he thinks it’s a little like It, with its cistern under Neibolt. He picked a home base, so now it’s—growing, for lack of a better term. But Richie can still feel Ben’s love even as the clubhouse grows, and maybe that’s why even now there’s still daylight peeking through. It isn’t so dark, down here.

And It doesn’t have as much strength, down here, the way It does in the sewers of Derry, the way it did when Richie tried to walk away and It had just—shoved him out of the driver’s seat and taken his body for a spin. Bitchass clown.

God, Ben. He really hopes Ben’s all right. Bev fixed him up as well as she could, but those damn _claws_ sure felt like they went in deep. And It was giggling all the while as it pinned Ben underneath like a butterfly to a board, whispering, **_you’re not gonna die alone, haystack, your old friend richie wouldn’t let you._** God bless Ben’s quick thinking, yanking Richie’s glasses off his face, throwing It off just enough for Richie to kick it out of the driver’s seat.

He curls up on the floor, rests his head against the wall. Probably a good thing that Bill and Mike hadn’t rounded out the club. It wouldn’t be able to resist if they did. It’s _obsessed_ with the Losers, all seven, but Bill’s their leader and Mike yanked Its heart out of its chest. If all seven of them are here in Derry—

Well, Richie doesn’t want to chance it. Let Bill and Mike and Audra stay far away from Derry for as long as humanly possible. Richie can hold out.

**_how long do you think you’ll last?_** It asks.

Richie doesn’t freeze up as much as he did, that first horrible time when he’d woken up and It had first spoken to him. He buries his hands in his hair and tugs, hard, focusing on that pain instead of It, whispering inside of his ear. For a moment the voice subsides, and Richie can pretend he’s alone again for a little while. Alone is fine. Alone is just fine. He’s good at it, these days.

Unbidden, the memory of Stan’s and Eddie’s hands on him, holding him back, bubbles back up to the forefront of his memory. For a moment, for a blessed moment, It had shut up and Richie could breathe again. Certainly It hadn’t been far, has never been far since it’s taken up space in Richie’s body, but Eddie had held his hand and suddenly that hadn’t mattered quite as much. Only Eddie’s hand in his, the steady warmth of it.

Richie tugs his knees up to his chest, and the smile that steals over his lips is soft, nostalgic, hopeful. Eddie had kissed him and kissed him and _kissed him_, wowza, kissed him but _good_, as though Richie’s worth something all on his own. Richie has never been kissed that way, not by the women hired by his agency to make him seem relatable, not by the men he took to his bed. Fuck, if he could go back in time and somehow rewrite history so Eddie Kaspbrak had been his first kiss, he would. He would.

He wishes he could have more. He wishes a lot of things, but between the two of them, between the seven of them, someone ought to be realistic about his chances of making it out of this alive.

But that’s fine. That’s fine. As long as Eddie makes it out, as long as all of the Losers make it out, then Richie’s okay. And until then he’ll steal as much time and as many kisses as he can.

** _oh, richie. and how much time do you think it will be until you lose him?_ **

Richie shuts his eyes. “Shut up,” he croaks.

**_one way or another you’re going to lose him. you lost him already, when he left you in the dark._** Something caresses his cheek, almost tender, and Richie wants to scream. Goes to grab for It, and finds nothing but thin air. **_you hate going missing. he knew that. he could’ve brought you out._**

“I’m not listening to you,” says Richie, trying to plug his ears and shut his eyes. “Shut the _fuck_ up, god, you stupid fucking—they thought I was _dead_, I don’t blame them. I _don’t_.”

_**why wouldn’t you?**_ It sounds so childishly outraged, as though Richie’s committed some mortal sin against it. **_they left you! i saved you, richie! i had to, you were so lonely and so scared, i couldn’t leave you alone, not like your old “friends” did. i blame them._** Slimy hands rest against his cheeks, and Richie chokes back a scream. He won’t look. He can’t. He won’t—

**_look at me, richie,_** It pleads, and at the same time forces Richie’s eyes open.

A young boy looks back at him, with sad eyes. _His_ eyes. Little Richie Tozier’s crouched in front of him, looking for all intents and purposes exactly the same as he did twenty-seven years ago, right down to the Freese’s shirt. His hands are planted firmly on either side of Richie’s face, and for a moment Richie cannot summon up any other emotion other than complete fucking bafflement, because what in the goddamn _fuck_.

Then he sees that flash of gold in the other Richie’s eyes, and understands.

“**_i stayed with you,_**” It says, in the voice of a thirteen-year-old Richie, high and piping. “**_i never left. what does that wheezy little mama’s boy know? he’s done nothing but run away his whole life. he ran from derry, he ran from his mother and his wife, he’ll run from you._**”

“He _moved here for me_,” snarls Richie, and in a flash he’s pinned the younger Richie to the ground, hands around his neck. “And I wouldn’t have been down there in the fucking cistern if it wasn’t for _you_, you shitty fucking alien clown! You killed Georgie, you almost killed Eddie, you did kill _me!_ Don’t fucking pretend you’re my fucking friend now!”

It looks up at him, and—smiles. From one moment to the next, Its hand shoots upward, grabs Richie by his neck, and flips them both over, and suddenly Richie’s looking at himself at twenty, stupid floppy hair and all, only the eyes are a burnished gold. Only there’s an earring dangling from his right ear. Only his jacket is silvery-white, with orange buttons trailing downward. “**_maybe not,_**” It says, in a low, breathy Voice that makes Richie’s blood run cold, the Voice of a club kid that Richie had run into in New York and whose voice and mannerisms he’d pulled into his standup routine and exaggerated for effect. “**_but i’m the one that saved you, not them. not wheezy little eddie kaspbrak. remember that? remember i pulled breath back into your dead lungs? i didn’t have to, but i did, because i just couldn’t bear to see you so alone._**”

Anywhere else that might’ve worked, or at least planted some seed of doubt. But here in the clubhouse, where Richie can _feel_ the sweet, childish love of a young boy for his first real friends settle over him like a warm blanket, it falls flat, and he snarls, “Fuck _you._” He shoves It off, hard, and gets to his feet as It rolls away. From one blink to the next, though, it simply—disappears, as though it was never there.

Which is true, isn’t it. It had never been there, had only produced illusions, because leaving Richie’s body even to creepily manipulate him would be the death of them both. But how _real_ those illusions had been.

**_remember that,_** Its voice echoes around the cavern, just then.

Richie swallows the bile that rises in his throat.


	10. dig under my feet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from April Smith and the Great Picture Show's "Terrible Things".
> 
> **content warnings:** discussions of fire. nothing really bad happens, this is relatively light compared to the other chapters, possibly because Richie doesn't make an appearance.

The rabbi’s office has open windows, a working lightbulb, and more light than Stan’s father’s office ever had, when he was the rabbi here. It’s a surprise to Stan too, and even more of one is the turtle.

The rabbi himself is nowhere to be found, having left a note on the table that just reads, _Mr. Uris: take what you need, visit again later on the Sabbath._ So unfortunately he can’t ask the rabbi just what the fuck is a _turtle_ doing in his office, and why is it near the file cabinet where they keep records of the members of the synagogue. In fact: why is it craning its neck up at the file cabinet? Like it’s looking for something.

(_like it wants to help_)

He blinks, shakes his head. This thing in his head is starting to get on his nerves, but—any port in a storm, after all, and they’ll need all the help they can get. After this, Stan can simply stuff this—this talent he has back into a dark corner of his mind and go back to Patty and live as quietly as he can, with the other Losers in regular contact. With Richie in regular contact.

He misses him. God, he really does. He misses Richie’s impressions and the near-impossibility of prying him off, not that Stan ever tried really hard to do so. For all the shit they gave each other, Richie had been one of his closest friends. Is. Is one of his closest friends.

He rubs a hand over his face, then blinks at the wall where the flute lady’s painting used to hang. There’s no painting hanging on the wall anymore. With a start, the second realization passes over Stan’s mind: there’s nothing to be scared of here anymore. At least not right now. It isn’t here, because Richie’s found some way to keep It away, keep it distracted, and a wave of almost shameful relief washes over Stanley.

The turtle’s still there. Now it’s looking right at him. Stan squints at it, then walks over and kneels down to pick it up. He’s about to take it out of the office and tell the rest they should take the gross, slimy little thing to a shelter or something before he stops, and looks at the file cabinet.

Then he looks down at the turtle, still craning its neck, but in a specific direction now. It’s pointing at a drawer, but which one? And why the hell is Stanley taking advice from a fucking turtle?

(_because it’s trying to show you something_)

He blinks, then sighs. Slowly, deliberately, he passes the turtle over the file drawers, watching its neck change angles until it’s perfectly horizontal. Then he gently places the turtle aside and pulls the drawer out: _K_, for _Kersh_.

There are four Kershes on file. Three are an immediate bust, but one, a Sarah Kersh, stares out at him from behind a sepia-toned photograph as a cold weight drops into Stan’s stomach. He knows those eyes. He knows that face. _Your father tried to save you,_ he thinks. _He made a deal with a monster to buy you more time. He couldn’t have known._

He looks down, expecting to see the turtle beside his foot.

There’s nothing but red, red carpet, and the sunlight spilling into the office, now suddenly too warm for Stan.

\--

Stan comes back out with a file on hand and says, “I saw something.”

“What?” Eddie asks, startling.

“Not It, and not Richie,” says Stan, holding up a hand before Eddie, Ben or Bev can rush him and start screaming insults at It. “Just—a turtle looking up at a file cabinet. I came closer, looked through the files, and the turtle was just gone when I next looked.”

“A turtle?” Ben asks. “All this way from the Kenduskeag?”

“It might’ve been someone’s pet,” Eddie suggests, although he can’t quite bring himself to believe that. He keeps seeing turtles in his dreams with Richie, the good ones where all they do is kiss and chat and bump ankles like they’re teenagers on a first date. “Do people usually bring their pets into synagogues?”

“Would you bring your pet into a church?” Stan shoots back, which, fair. “No. People don’t generally bring their pets into the synagogue while services are ongoing.”

“The turtle’s being very helpful,” Beverly murmurs, and Eddie glances over at her. She’s staring off at the doorway Stan emerged from, her eyes distant, before she shakes her head and comes back to herself. “What?” she asks.

“The turtle?” Ben asks.

Bev shrugs. “Someone’s pet, probably,” she says, “maybe they snuck one in.” Then she pauses. “Have I got something in my teeth?”

“Nothing,” says Eddie, thinking of turtles in dreams. “So what did you find?” he asks Stan.

“Records,” says Stan, brandishing a file towards them, “of a Sarah Kersh, née Gray.”

\--

The great thing about having a job at the library is that Eddie can claim the photocopier any time he wants without having to pay to use it. The fantastic thing is that he can essentially sic Ben and Stan on the public records and on Mike’s old files once they’ve got the basics and dates of Sarah Kersh’s life, from converting to Judaism to a death certificate at the age of 66 nearly forty-five years after her conversion. Which explains why Beverly saw her as an old woman, Eddie figures.

Mrs. Kersh, they had found out relatively fast on the way to the library, had lied to Beverly about knowing her father. Sarah Kersh had died in 1935, years before Al and Elfrida Marsh ever got married, exactly 27 years after the Ironworks explosion. Probably fortunately for the Losers, Stan’s old synagogue doesn’t include any details about how. Eddie can make a guess anyway, with Richie’s story in the back of his mind.

_She floated._

Beverly hadn’t spent more than a day at most in the Deadlights. Richie had only floated for, god, maybe a minute or less. None of them know how long it takes for the Deadlights to do irreparable damage to someone, but Eddie remembers the trickle of blood coming out of Richie’s nose. Nasal hemorrhage, veins bursting where they shouldn’t in the brain and in the body—and a woman of sixty-six is far more frail than a forty-year-old man, or a thirteen-year-old girl, her body already failing her. She wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Assuming, of course, that Pennywise used the Deadlights on her. It assumed Georgie’s form just fine, and all it did was eat him.

This, of course, just leaves Bev and Eddie at the table near the library’s ancient photocopier, waiting for it to spit out the rest of the second copy out of seven. “Didn’t Mike buy a new one?” Bev asks. “He said he did.”

“Bowers wrecked it,” Eddie says darkly. Bowers has committed many sins against the library for which Cathy will never forgive him, and it’s easy for Eddie to slot them under the shit he and his gang did to the Losers. He’s starting to like this place, despite himself, despite knowing it’s only temporary, until they can get Richie out of the sewers.

“Oh,” says Bev. “You guys didn’t buy a new one?”

“We’re working on it,” says Eddie, looking around. There’s not a lot of people in today, except for Jessica and two of her fellow interns, Dash and his twin Joan. Dana’s nowhere to be found, probably because she’s the only competent intern in this entire building and is probably doing actual work, unlike her asshole friends who are clustered around a table poorly pretending not to watch Eddie and Bev. Fuckin’ weirdos. “It’s just that Bowers left a fuckload of property damage, and I only _just_ got the repair guys to agree to fix the mail room.”

“That explains why there’s a stack of packages in the lobby,” says Bev. “At least Bowers can’t do any more damage, though.”

“At least,” Eddie echoes. Sure, that’s a human life, and sure, the fact that there was a dead body in the library had made Eddie queasy when they’d all come on the crime scene, but. Well. He can’t summon up much sympathy, when it’s Bowers. He can still remember all the jeers Bowers threw at him when they were kids, the names that got under Eddie’s skin. Richie’s, too. All the Losers’, really, especially Mike, who’d been Bowers’ favorite target. But who’s the winner now? Mike’s out of Derry, the Losers out of Derry are all happy and successful, and Bowers is dead and rotting in the ground. So fuck that guy.

The copier spits out the final page of the second copy, and Eddie snatches up the pages and starts checking them over for any mistakes. So far so good, and he hands them to Bev so she can arrange them as she sees fit. “So how’re you and Ben?” he asks.

Bev smiles down at the pages, then looks up. “Really good,” she says. “We both found ourselves a couple of therapists, for one thing. And—you know he cooks me dinner?”

“Really?” Eddie asks.

“Yeah,” says Bev. “We rotate, so some days I’m on dinner and some days he is. He’s a lot better at cooking than I am, though, that’s for sure.” She leans her elbow on the table and says, “He’s—good. Down to his _bones_.” Her smile fades, a little, as she continues, “I don’t know what I did to deserve that, but I want to keep him.” There’s an ironic twist to her mouth now, as she brushes strands of red hair back behind her ear, her sleeve slipping down to expose unblemished skin, the bruises her ex left on her having long since healed. _Selfish, right?_ she doesn’t say.

“Ben doesn’t give a shit if you deserve him or not, I can guarantee that,” says Eddie, thinking of Ben worrying at a storm drain, wanting her to be happy. “He wants you to be happy, that’s all. He’s probably more worried _he_ doesn’t deserve _you_.”

“You sound like my therapist,” says Bev, but a real spark of life has come back into her eyes. “You really think that?”

“You guys love each other,” says Eddie. “Statistically, it can be very hard to find something like what you two have. For what it’s worth, I’m glad for both of you.” And a little jealous, as well, because he can only count what he has with Richie in stolen moments and dreams. It isn’t _enough_, but it has to be. They don’t have much else. “I really am,” he repeats, because he _is_ happy for them. He is.

Bev doesn’t say anything, but she takes his hand, squeezes it tight and reassuring. She doesn’t say anything, and doesn’t need to. It’s enough. “I’m glad for you too,” is all she does say, after a minute’s gone, the copier spitting out more pages for a third copy. They should load up on paper.

Eddie doesn’t really move. He’s used the copier a couple of times before, they’re fine till the fourth copy, unless of course the thing decides to shit itself. “I wish he was here, sometimes, with me instead of down there,” he says, lowly, and he doesn’t have to name who he’s talking about, because Bev already knows. “Sometimes shit happens and I’m turning to talk to him already before I remember he’s not there.”

“For a while I couldn’t watch any stand-up comedy,” Bev confesses. “Any of it. I’d start a special while working on a design, and then I’d start crying five minutes in. I tried to catch up on a sitcom I was watching, and the moment I saw him walk through the door and start talking I just cried.”

“Could you watch them now?” Eddie asks.

“No,” says Bev. “Not even now.” She brushes her thumb across his knuckles, the gesture a small comfort. “I miss him too,” she says.

Eddie sighs, just as the copier suddenly starts to sputter. “Aw, fuck,” he mutters, then stands up to walk over and give it a good bang. “_Work_, you stupid fucking thing,” he spits.

As if cowed by Eddie’s stern tone, the copier stops sputtering and continues on its merry way. Just in case, Eddie feeds it more paper. When he looks up, he sees the interns clustered together, whispering frantically. “What’re they even doing here?” he mutters.

Bev twists around in her seat to squint at them, then shakes her head. “They’re just kids, Eddie,” she says. “They’re hanging out. Studying, maybe.”

“I’d find that easier to believe if they had a book with them,” says Eddie. “It’s the fall, there’s gotta be something else to do in this town besides hang out in the library.” He pauses, thinking of the Barrens and of Richie chasing out everyone wandering in by accident. “Right?”

“It’s _Derry_,” says Bev, which—sums it all up, really.

Ben arrives pretty fast, with a stack of books and a look on his face like he’s found heaven or something. Eddie remembers, Ben had been a pretty big fan of the library way back in the day, had divided his time between the Losers, the library, and home in the summers. “There _was_ a circus in 1881,” he says, without preamble, placing the stack down on the table with enough care that it makes no real sound. “Twenty-seven years before the explosion at the Ironworks, which is the first time It shows up as Pennywise, in the few pictures of It that _are_ real.”

“Wait, how do you know?” Eddie asks. “He showed up in your collection, in that picture with the settlers.”

“I found that picture again and checked,” says Ben, pulling a book off the stack and flipping it open to show them the illustration—no clown, Eddie quickly notes, and no real feeling of fear creeping up his spine. “He wasn’t there, at least not as Pennywise. 1881 is the first time Pennywise shows up, as part of Callahan and Stillson’s Traveling Circus.”

“As old Bob Gray,” says Bev, as Ben flips to another page to show them the circus: the striped tent, the performers all standing stiffly in line for their photograph. _There’s_ the clown, standing beside a heavily-muscled man in a sepia-toned singlet who’s the only one in the whole photograph grinning widely for the camera.

Eddie’s hand wanders down to his pocket before he remembers that his inhaler’s gone—just a hunk of melted plastic in a sinkhole on Neibolt Street. “Fuck,” he says, instead, sinking into his seat, that old fear stealing up his spine.

Bev frowns down at the picture, her brows furrowed. She rubs a thumb over it and says, “Richie only gave us a sketch. There are details we’re missing, like—what happened to the circus, afterwards?”

A cold chill reaches deep into Eddie’s lungs, seizes them tight in a death grip that has him gripping, white-knuckled, on the edge of the table. _Don’t ask that, Beverly,_ he wants to beg, suddenly sure. _Ask anything else. Walk away from the circus. Tell me about your divorce, about your company, about your dog, anything, just please don’t tell me what happened to the fucking circus._

Ben glances up at Eddie, then places his non-injured hand over Eddie’s own. “Hey,” he says, kindly, gently. “I get it. This—I’m only just going off what I’m remembering, from when I was doing the research. Some of it I could’ve done without knowing, when I was a kid.” He looks at Bev, her eyes expectant, and squeezes Eddie’s hand briefly before letting go. “There was an arson incident,” he says, “as the summer was coming to an end.”

He turns the pages, and Bev claps her hand over her mouth, her eyes horrified. Eddie’s chair scrapes backward, the bile rising in his throat before he swallows it all down. _I knew it,_ he thinks, staring at the big top wreathed in flames. There must’ve been a show, inside. There must’ve been people there, and how terrified they were, when the flames climbed high and began to cook them in their shiny new clothes. _I fucking knew it._

“There were survivors,” says Ben. “An acrobat who’d slept in, some kids. They never caught the people who did it.” _Like the Black Spot._

“Welcome to Derry,” Bev says, darkly.

“Shit,” says Eddie, succinctly.

Someone knocks on the table. Eddie nearly jumps out of his chair in shock, as do Ben and Bev, but when he looks up, it’s only Stan with a few files from public records, and glasses perched on his nose. “Am I interrupting something?” he asks.

“There was a circus in 1881,” says Ben, “and it burned to the ground just as the summer was ending. Familiar?”

“Somewhat,” says Stan. “I found a few more records, before she converted. Here.” He puts the files down, the edge of the folders precisely aligned with the table. “No birth certificate, but there’s an adoption certificate, and she shows up in school records.”

“What are we looking for, Stan?” Bev asks, her voice one of someone searching for something. “She’s real. She was a person that It took, and it brought her back out because it wanted to get to me. But what are we looking for? How can we use it to help Richie?”

“She wrote letters,” says Stan, and opens one file to show them laminated letters. From _Mike’s_ collection, Eddie realizes, but he’d never really thought to take the loose papers out from the library basement just yet. He’d been focused on what he could glean from the books, and not quite willing to risk taking the rest to the townhouse just yet, out of the library’s safety. “I read a few, and while her handwriting is difficult to decipher, I think—she got _close_. She wanted to find out what happened to her father, and she got close to getting him out.”

“Only,” says Bev, “there wasn’t anything left of him. Was there? It had been too long.”

A cold weight drops into Eddie’s stomach. “How long—”

“Well, definitely not twenty-seven years,” says Stan. “But It got Richie recently, and he’s been fighting the whole way. He’d hold out longer than Bob Gray did, especially since Eddie’s helping.”

“But there’s a time limit,” says Ben. “How long do you think we have? I don’t need an exact number,” he adds, in the voice of someone who’s been through this before, talking to suppliers over how long it’ll take before he can get what he needs for a particular building, “but I’d feel better, if we had an idea how long.”

“Yeah, I would too,” Stan mutters, looking distinctly peeved and pushing his glasses up his nose. “I can’t give you guys that, though. I don’t know shit-all about—whatever this is,” and he taps his temple, “but it hasn’t deigned to give me even an estimate. My best guess is it’s a matter of months, but I can’t tell you how many. I can’t even ballpark it. I just know it’s not going to be a long time.”

“So the sooner we do this, the better,” says Ben. “I think we might need to call Bill and Mike, see if they found anything in Scotland: a ritual, a fairytale, _something_.”

“It’s a little late in the day for that,” says Bev. “They’re probably asleep by now. We can try them tomorrow morning, pass on what we found.”

“I’ll try to reach out to Richie tonight,” says Eddie, his fingers reaching up to touch his sternum, where the arcade token rests under his clothes, over his skin and close to his heart. “You two can come along if you want. Maybe even Ben could come?”

Stan takes his glasses off, folds them up neatly and puts them in his jacket pocket. Then he sits down beside Bev and leans against her, one palm over his eyes like a headache’s beginning to grow behind his eyelids, shaking his head minutely as if he can’t take this anymore, as if he’s out of words he can use to try to reframe the whole thing into something that doesn’t fly in the face of logic. Bev lets him burrow into her side, reaching a hand up to pat his curls very gently. “I’m sorry Derry makes no sense, honey,” she says.

Eddie reaches over to pat Stan on the shoulder, because—fuck, he’s been in the thick of this for ages, but it still drives him up the wall, too.

“I mean,” says Ben, answering Eddie’s question, “I can try, but you’re gonna have to lead the way on this.”

“Um,” says Eddie.

“You have no idea how, do you,” says Stan.

“Fucking sue me, Stanley!” says Eddie, throwing his hands up. “This shit’s all new to me too! I have no fucking clue what I’m doing, I’m just going by instinct and common sense! Bev here is more of an expert than I am—”

“I just had psychic premonitions, that doesn’t qualify me as an expert,” Bev points out.

“—and she doesn’t count because it’s not psychic fucking dreams that I’m having!” Eddie continues, barely missing a beat, one hand dropping and the other hand cutting through the air. “Anyway, _you_ just said you don’t know shit-all about your thing, so hey, I guess we’re _all_ just playing it by fucking ear, huh? For all I know, maybe sleeping in the same room’s enough! Or maybe you have to snort some weird fucking drug! I have no fucking idea, none of us have any idea, unless you’ve got one!”

“Yeah,” says Stan, dryly. “Take an Ambien and sleep in the same room as you.”

“I know you meant that as a joke,” Ben says, “but I’m considering it. I really am.”

“Who do I fucking look like to you, Richie?” says Stan, and if it weren’t for that twitch at his mouth, Eddie would fall for this performance. One thing to be said for Stan, when he does decide to joke, he’s very good at keeping a straight face. “I mean every word I say. I’ve never made a joke in my life.”

“Yeah, _right_,” says Bev, derisive. “Kookie, kookie.”

“How did you remember that?” Ben asks, looking flabbergasted and a little in awe, which is basically his default state around Beverly, so he looks mostly normal. Stan, beside her, hides his face in her shoulder as he melts down into giggles.

The copier sputters again.

“God-fucking-_dammit_,” says Eddie, standing up. God. They have really ought to get a better copier. “Hold on, the copier’s throwing a fucking fit again. Christ.”

\--

On their way into the townhouse, Eddie spots another rose on the sidewalk. He slows his steps for a moment, letting the others walk on past him, absorbed in their own conversations—about Bev’s divorce, about Ben’s new contract with a broadcasting company based in the Philippines, about Stan and Patty’s adoption plans. Eddie lets their words wash over him, watches his friends head inside, chattering all the while.

Then he bends down and picks the rose up. In the back of his head, a part of him whisper-screams, _You can’t just pick shit up from off the sidewalk! You don’t know where it’s been! You don’t know what’s stepped on it! You don’t know what it’s been lying in and for how long!_ Maybe once upon a time he might’ve listened to that voice, and sometimes he still does, but not in this case. Not with the roses. Not with Richie’s roses.

This one’s green, this time, like fresh-cut grass in summer. Eddie smiles and tucks it away in his jacket, then leans down over the sidewalk, hoping to catch a glint of sunlight off Richie’s glasses. He doesn’t, but that’s okay. He knows Richie’s listening.

“Thanks, Rich,” he says. “Show up tonight, yeah? We’re gonna try something.”

There’s no response. Breaks Eddie’s heart a little, honestly. When did he become so—so used to having Richie around to talk to again, even in this way?

“Were they running out of red at the florist’s or something?” Eddie asks, not really expecting an answer. “Not that I’m complaining. Red roses are great and all, but I could use a little variety. Those blue roses, maybe. Some fucking carnations or something? I don’t know, I’ve never—flowers are _new_, you, you know what my mom was like about them.” And the one time he’d tried to give Myra flowers he’d had a panic attack over flower language and possible pollen allergies, which maybe should’ve been a warning sign right there. Myra didn’t _have_ a pollen allergy.

Richie says nothing. Eddie sighs.

“I wish I could tell you,” he starts, then stops. He looks up from the storm drain to see Stan poking his head out of the door and calling for him to _come in already, Eddie, you can talk to Richie later._ “Well, I gotta go,” he says, apologetic, as Stan ducks back inside. “But we’ll be expecting you.”

He heads back inside, and drops the green rose into a vase nearly overflowing with red roses. Every single one is as vibrant and alive as they were the day Eddie picked them up, and while he hopes that’s because he’s been taking such good care of them, he half-suspects that Richie’s playing a part in keeping them alive. The sap. Eddie would never have pegged him for a romantic.

Fuck, before all this, Eddie never thought of himself as a romantic. He’s learning new things about himself, and that’s enough to get him to start humming.

“All right,” he says, walking into the minibar where the Losers’ Club had once upon a time all assembled to talk about how to kill It, “we’re all sleeping in my room tonight.”

“You’re sure about this,” says Bev.

“I am,” says Eddie. “Anyone have any sleeping problems? Nightmares, sleep apnea—”

“Everyone here has nightmares,” says Ben, “but otherwise I think we’re all good to go.” He looks at Eddie, and asks, “Is there anything else we have to do before we go to sleep in your room?”

“Yeah, brush your fucking teeth and piss before you sleep,” says Eddie. “For you, Ben? Get your bandages changed. I don’t know how long that’s been on you but it’s gone too long already without being changed.”

Ben lets out a tired sigh, rubbing his hands over his eyes. “Dreams-wise.”

“I’ll change them,” says Bev, and Ben’s cheeks turn a bright red, just like they used to when he was a kid.

“I’ll help,” says Stan. “I have—_some_ experience in changing bandages.”

“Beats me,” says Eddie, to Ben. “I’m just winging it as we go. I’m _hoping_ this works, but if it doesn’t, I’ll call Mike, see what he’s got to say.” Hopefully, nothing that requires ingesting borderline-illegal substances. God knows Eddie’s trying to slow down in that area. “In the meantime, do we have any beer?”

Stan holds up a bottle.

Eddie takes it from his grasp and cracks it open. As he does, he counts the bottles that Stan’s set out on the counter, including the one he has now—one, two, three, four, five. One for each Loser currently in Derry, even though Richie won’t be able to join them.

When they all climb up to sleep, Eddie leaves the fifth bottle on the counter, and a sandwich.


	11. slowly learning how to break this spell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Sleeping at Last's "Three".
> 
> **content warnings:** nothing onscreen. implications of domestic abuse re: Bev and the effects of emotional abuse on Eddie, I guess? also Richie talks about being possessed and it's implied he's resigned to the possibility of dying.

When Eddie opens his eyes, he’s standing on the sidewalk of Main Street, USA, in Disneyland. Of all fucking places. He turns on his heel, seeing nothing but empty buildings and cobblestones and a turtle-shaped cloud making its peaceful way overhead. “Fucking hell, it didn’t work,” he spits, kicking angrily at a lamppost. “Ow!”

“What’d that lamp ever do to you, huh, Eds?” Richie asks, and Eddie whips around so fast he’s almost surprised he doesn’t give himself whiplash. Richie’s holding two ice cream cones, vanilla and chocolate, and has a set of mouse ears sitting on his head at an angle that makes Eddie not very confident they’ll stay on in the next few minutes. “What didn’t work, anyway?”

“Bev, Ben, and Stan are sleeping in the same room with me right now,” says Eddie, as Richie comes up. “I was hoping maybe we could all talk without It hanging around like a fucked-up chaperone.”

“Maybe it’s ‘cause we’re not all here?” Richie says. “Come on, not everyday you get to visit fucking Disneyland while no one’s around!” He tilts the vanilla ice cream towards Eddie, and Eddie half-considers stealing the chocolate one out of his hand instead. But—there’s other, more real concerns to worry about, like time limits, like the damn clown, like whatever Mrs. Kersh found that made her so sure she could save her father. “What’s eating ya, Eds?” Richie asks, snapping Eddie out of his thoughts.

“Your sister,” Eddie says, and Richie cracks up at that, a laugh startling out of him. “Gimme that.” And he snatches the chocolate ice cream from Richie anyway, smugly licking it as Richie bellyaches beside him.

“Why must you _betray me_ like this,” Richie says, pressing his wrist to his temple like Marlene Davidson when they put on _Romeo and Juliet_ in seventh grade, as if he’s going to swoon right off the stage the way she did. By now they’ve slumped down to the sidewalk, with Eddie’s hand on Richie’s kneecap. “Oh, Eddie! Here I thought I knew your ice cream order!”

“I haven’t had ice cream in years, so fucking sue me if I want the good shit for my first time,” says Eddie. “Hold still.”

“What? Why?” Richie asks, just as Eddie leans close to kiss him deep. “Mm_fuck_,” he gasps as soon as Eddie breaks away, “I take it back, I’d rather have you over chocolate ice cream.”

Eddie can’t help the flush that creeps up his neck, at the compliment. He leans against Richie then, and lets himself bask in the dream’s artificial silence. There’s no way Disneyland is ever this quiet, in real life, but in dreams anything is possible, including some fucking peace at a theme park that Eddie is sure is usually a breeding ground for diseases and infections and other shit.

His hand drifts from Richie’s knee to his hand. In dreams Richie’s warm, his chest rising and falling in time with his breathing, and when the light hits his hair just right it almost looks like a glowing halo. Fuck, Eddie could’ve had this sooner. They should’ve left town together and stayed that way, gone to LA or New York or anywhere together, hand in hand, always. God, he loves him.

Richie looks back, and says, “What? Have I got something on my face?”

“Yeah, ice cream,” says Eddie, shaking himself out of his reverie and leaning over to wipe off what little ice cream did make it onto Richie’s face. “How the fuck do you manage to get ice cream on your cheek?”

“Talent,” says Richie, leaning into Eddie’s touch. “Wanna go see the Tiki Room?”

“Nope,” says Eddie. “Not today. Maybe out in the real world.”

Richie pulls his hand away then, drumming his fingers on his knee as he draws back. “Yeah,” he says, his voice casual and light. “Maybe.”

“Rich,” says Eddie, softly, “we’re on our way. We’re filling in the sketch—you didn’t say shit-all about the daughter finding a way.”

“It didn’t work, though,” says Richie, dropping the casual tone, pulling up one knee to his chest and looking down at his ice cream. “Or we wouldn’t be here in the first place.”

“Because she did it fifty-four years after her dad got taken,” says Eddie, the certainty in his voice shocking even him. But then it is true, isn’t it? Blood isn’t enough, there’s timing to be taken into account—it’s like that adage about the first 48 hours being crucial in solving a crime. The sooner you do it the better your chances of catching the murderer, of saving the guy. “We’ll do it sooner than that.”

“What happens if it doesn’t work?” Richie asks, his voice gentle and a little sad. “What happens if there’s no way to save me? You’re hanging a lot of hope on a what-if here, Eds.”

_Because what the fuck else have we got?_ Eddie doesn’t say. _We don’t know what we’re doing. The only thing we know is how to kill the clown, and that’s not useful if we want to save you. And we want to save you. I want to save you. I want you to show me Disneyland and your old comedy clubs and your favorite California beaches with all the people there, I want to complain about the foot traffic and the disease rates and the tourism to your face, I want to show you around New York and see your face._ “_If_ there’s no way to save you,” Eddie says, “we’ll—bring your body out, I don’t know. But that’s a big _if_, and I don’t believe there’s no way to save you.” And belief, in Derry, has a special power all its own.

“Haven’t analyzed the risks yet?” Richie asks.

“I did,” says Eddie. “I just think—it’s you, Rich. You’re worth them all.” _I love you,_ he thinks, desperately. “Besides, if I managed to make it to your window just fine all the time without fucking killing myself then this can’t be too hard,” he adds, all in a rush. “Why the _fuck_ did you pick a second floor window, Jesus.”

“You slept on the second floor too, dickweed,” says Richie, nudging his shoulder. “I climbed through your window too, and I was way stealthier about it than you ever were. Like a ninja.”

“Shut the fuck up, you were _not_,” says Eddie, shoving back. “You’re lucky my mom’s full attention was on her soaps only, you jerkoff, or you’d have gotten caught fifty times over by the time we hit sixteen.”

“No, I was definitely a fucking ninja,” Richie says. “She couldn’t hear me.”

“You fell on my floor _three fucking times_ and I had to throw a book on the ground and pretend I got the shit scared out of me by fucking _Nightcrawler_,” huffs Eddie. “You’re lucky she didn’t confiscate my X-Men comics outright! She thought I was fucking terrified of _that blue devil_ for months!”

“In her defense, she wasn’t thinking straight after the mind-blowing orgasm I gave her that morning,” says Richie, and raises his hands to keep Eddie from yanking on his ear for the joke. “For her! For her! I was thinking about you the whole time, Eds, definitely—”

“_Fuck you_, dude,” Eddie snaps, practically clambering into Richie’s space, “people actually pay you for this shit, what the _fuck_—”

“We’re at Disneyland!” Richie all but howls, as Eddie sends them both sprawling to the ground, their respective ice cream cones splattering on the cobblestones. Eddie does not feel too guilty about that. This is a dream, he’ll make another pair later. “You’re—the ghost of Walt fucking Disney is going to hear you shit-talking your boyfriend!”

“The ghost of Walt fucking Disney heard you talk about fucking my mom while thinking about me, asshole!” Eddie all but shrieks, trying to grab Richie’s flailing arms to pin him down. “Boat’s fucking _sailed!_ How the fuck do people let you into goddamn _Disneyland_ if your idea of a joke is just _fucking my_—”

“Uh,” Beverly’s voice says, from just behind them, “guys? Are we interrupting something?”

Eddie freezes, then sits up, Richie’s knees bracketing him on either side. He turns to see Bev, Ben and Stan standing on the sidewalk, with Ben wearing a set of mouse ears on his head and Stan nibbling at an almond croissant. Bev is staring at them with a slightly embarrassed expression on her face, like _they’ve_ caught _her_ somehow, like Eddie is not probably blushing redder than a tomato right now. He is, he’s pretty sure of it, he can feel his cheeks burning.

“I guess it did work,” says Ben, sounding a little surprised.

“Where the fuck were you assholes, then?” Eddie asks. “Were you just here the whole time or—”

“Sort of,” says Stan. “I ended up in Main Street Cinema. Bev found Ben somewhere in Frontierland. We weren’t sure where you two had gone, though, we were going to head to Fantasyland to check.”

Richie doesn’t say anything, but when Eddie looks back at him he looks almost—haunted. His hand steals towards Eddie’s, fingers brushing against Eddie’s knuckles before he pulls away again, scooting back as if to get some distance between himself and the other Losers. Like he did in Bev’s old apartment. Like he’s scared to hurt them.

Eddie’s hand follows Richie’s before he’s even thinking about it, catching his wrist in a loose hold. If Richie wanted to, really wanted to, he could just pull his hand free, and Eddie’ll understand.

That Richie stops, and hesitantly moves back towards them again, means the world to Eddie.

“I didn’t think you guys would make it,” Eddie says, more than a little relieved and also very embarrassed. “I was hoping it would work but when you didn’t show up right away—well, I thought it didn’t.”

“Yeah, I would’ve hung a sock on the doors to the Tiki Room if I knew you guys did make it here,” says Richie, squeezing Eddie’s hand once, a reassurance. “Maybe put out some iced tea or something. Nice mouse ears, by the way, Ben. You’re the first person I’ve seen that they look good on.”

“Yeah, thanks, Bev got them for me,” says Ben.

“Can we please,” Stan speaks up, “go somewhere besides Main Street? My feet are killing me.”

“This is a _dream_,” says Richie, baffled. “Why would your feet be killing you?”

Eddie, very discreetly, wipes his other hand off on his shirt. God knows what’s been tracked all over Main Street, USA, what’s spilled and spat and shat onto it from years of tourist traffic. Sure, this is a dream Main Street in a dream Disneyland where the only people for miles around are the five of them, but goddammit, it’s the principle of the thing.

“I’ve always wanted to go to the Plaza Inn,” says Bev. “Kay, she told me once, if I ever went to Disneyland I should stop by the inn and try the pasta.”

“Your friend Kay McCall, yeah?” says Ben, as Richie gets to his feet, as Eddie catches Richie’s hand again. “Did you ever get around to talking to her again? I’d like to meet her.” The two lovebirds walk ahead, their heads already bending together, talking about Kay and dinner and reconnecting with old friends, once Bev’s divorce pushes through. Eddie viciously hopes that sleazebag ex of hers gets a long, long sentence, sees nothing but cold grey walls, wears nothing but grey scratchy fabric. Seems only fair. And meanwhile Bev can go on, free as a bird.

Stan looks back at them, their joined hands, then says, “Are you two going to behave for the ghost of Walt Disney if I leave you alone for a few minutes?”

“If he hasn’t kicked our ass for earlier, I don’t think he’d mind a little PDA,” Richie says, winking.

“I’ll make him behave,” Eddie says, meaning it. Between himself and Richie, he’s better at being a sensible person. Even if he’s really more anxious than sensible, even if he channels that anxiety into seeming like he’s got his shit together. He does, most of the time, even here in Derry where people have definitely seen him talking to storm drains.

Stan’s eyebrow ticks upward, like he really doesn’t believe them, before he shrugs and turns on his heel to join Ben and Bev. Eddie waits till the lovebirds and their third wheel have gone on some twenty feet ahead before he starts forward, Richie’s hand in his, Richie beside him, his body pressed up against his. Add a couple thousand more people around them and some screaming children and this’ll really be a Disneyland double date.

He asks, “So you’ve been here before?”

“I have a FastPass,” says Richie. “I did some voice work for a couple movies here and there, so it was easy to get one. I don’t go often, ‘cause the traffic’s a fucking _nightmare_, but it’s a great place to spend a weekend.” A wry smirk touches his mouth as he adds, “Why, I remember, one time I brought old Mrs. K to the resort—”

Eddie slugs Richie’s shoulder, a light punch with no real intent behind it. Richie just laughs.

“Okay, okay,” says Richie. “Okay. No classics tonight.”

“There better not be,” huffs Eddie. “_Please_ find better material. I’m begging, here.”

“Not _here_, the children might see,” says Richie. “Think of their impressionable minds, Eds!”

“Contrary to what you think, kids have some critical thinking skills,” says Eddie, remembering the kids clambering around the children’s librarian for storytime. As enraptured as they were by the story, they also had some wild questions, and Eddie had come away with his head spinning a little from all their questions. Over a _Doctor Seuss_ book, of all things. “And they’re good at seeing through bullshit.” That, the Losers all know from personal experience. “Anyway, I did want to talk to you without the rest around.”

“We do that every other night or so,” Richie points out.

“About what happened,” Eddie says.

Richie doesn’t say anything, just looks down at his shoes and kicks idly at the ground. “There’s not much to say,” he says. “I wasn’t in charge. It caught me off-guard and the next thing I know I’m watching a snuff film starring Benjamin ‘Haystack’ Hanscom.”

“Yeah, you weren’t in charge,” says Eddie. “So strictly speaking, you’re not the one who’s dangerous here.”

“I kind of am,” Richie says.

Eddie spins around, stopping Richie in his tracks as he pulls his hand out of Richie’s grasp and grabs his elbows. “No, _you_ are _not_,” he says. “You’re possessed, okay. When It tries to take over, yes, it’s dangerous to be around you, I’ll acknowledge that.” Even saying that much feels like giving up ground he can’t afford to give up, but Eddie’s not blind, he can see what sort of point Richie is trying to make. It is dangerous, even in Richie’s body, even being held in check most of the time. “But _you’re_ not fucking dangerous,” Eddie stresses. “Except to my blood pressure.”

“Eddie,” Richie starts.

“No, shut up, I’m not finished,” says Eddie, placing his hands on Richie’s chest, feeling Richie’s heart beating fast under his skin. “Yeah, there’s risk, but it’s not coming from you. I’ve been alone with you plenty of times now, in and out of dreams, but I’ve never felt anything other than _safe_ around you, and not—not the kind of, of safe my mom or Myra wanted for me, okay?” His hands drift up now to frame Richie’s face, the stunned look in his eyes, the parted lips, the stubbled cheeks. “Like—if I jumped you’d be there to catch me. You wouldn’t keep me from jumping in the first place, but you’d be at the bottom waiting for me.”

Richie’s mouth twists upward in a shadow of his usual smile. “Yeah,” he says, softly. “I’ll catch you. As long as I can.” His hand reaches up, and his fingers curl loosely around Eddie’s wrist, thumb absently rubbing over the pulse point, and Eddie shivers at the contact, at the intimacy of it.

“I know you will,” he says. “I just—I want you to know that too. Whatever It does using your body, it’s not on you. The shit It pulls, even on us, is not on your hands. And it certainly wouldn’t change the fact that I’ve never been scared of you, you are the least scary person I know.” His thumb brushes over Richie’s cheek, and he feels Richie lean into his touch. _I love you,_ Eddie thinks. _God, how I love you._ “You know I—I care about you,” he says. “A lot. A _lot_.”

“I know,” says Richie. “I love you too.” His free hand settles on Eddie’s waist, and Eddie sucks in a breath at the heavy feel of it. “I’ll say it enough for the both of us. I love you, Eddie, I just—we’ve gone over this, I don’t want you to get hurt because of It using me. Or the other Losers, but that boat’s kinda sailed.”

“None of us blame you,” says Eddie. “_None of us_. And if Bill and Mike were here they wouldn’t blame you either, Richie, because we love you, because we know the kind of person you are. You don’t always have a choice in this shit, especially when It gets pissy and throws a fit, and we know that. It’s _not on you_, it is _not_ your fucking fault. Okay? Don’t run away on us all of a sudden because you think you’re fucking dangerous.”

“I don’t think, I _know_,” says Richie, pulling away. “I know because I can feel It fucking _clawing_ at the inside of my skull when it really, _really_ wants to get out. And when we’re together, when it’s more of us than just you and me and one other Loser—” He stops, pushes his hand through his hair, shoves the other one in his pocket. “It’s scared of you,” he says. “It’s scared of _us_, all of us, ‘cause we killed it and it knows we’re gonna keep fucking it up. It’s backed into a corner, it knows it. It’s like—when you back a stray into a corner, right, and you try to pick it up so you can bring it home?”

“I’ve never touched a stray in my life,” Eddie says, although that’s—kind of a lie, honestly. He _has_ petted strays before, but he’s never tried to bring one home. And every time he did pet one, he’d squirted a dollop of hand sanitizer onto his hand right afterwards, so.

“Pretend you have so this metaphor works,” says Richie. “You back a stray up, you reach out a hand, and it fucks you up _hard_. Because it might be terrified and it might be going down, but it’s not going down without a fight.” He taps the center of his chest, where the hole would be in the real world. Here, in this dream, it’s not here. Here, at least, Richie’s whole and alive, but Eddie knows he’s only dreaming. “It’s _terrified_, so it’s pulling out all the stops this time.” He looks Eddie dead in the eye, his irises as blue as ever. “When four of us were together It freaked out and tried to take one out. How badly do you think It’ll react if all seven of us are in Derry?”

Eddie remembers how light Its heart had felt in their hands. Remembers how It had started to flake away in that first fight, crumbling in on itself like paper burning away. Remembers the leper puking up on him, just as he’d been on the verge of _winning_. Back a feral animal into a corner, and it’ll fight back, because what other option is there to take? “Fuck,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Richie. “But I get what you mean, Eds. And, fuck, you’ve got a point.”

“Say that again, I want it for my ringtone,” says Eddie.

“Sure, if you want a buncha static on your phone,” Richie responds. “I’m serious, though. Deadly fucking serious. You have a point, I guess, about—blame, and responsibility, and all that shit, but even if I’m not the one in charge, I just—It’s using me as a meat puppet. You think I wouldn’t make this easier if I could? If I had my way we’d have killed It already, but my way’s not on the table and it hasn’t been in months.”

“Rich,” Eddie starts.

“Eds,” says Richie. “Eddie, I _know_ I can’t stop you. I’m not gonna try. But I just—” He hesitates, then rocks back and forth on his heels, before taking Eddie’s hand again. “You gotta be more _careful_,” he says, which, ha, he’s saying that to _Eddie_. “Quit rolling your eyes, you know what I mean. I love you, I want you to make it out of Derry alive.”

“I want the same for you,” Eddie counters.

“Yeah, but between the two of us, I’m the dead one here,” says Richie, and some irrational part of Eddie wants to smack him for saying that out loud. Even worse is Richie’s gentle tone about it, like he’s only the messenger breaking bad news to someone he cares about. If he was bitter about it Eddie could understand, but he just sounds resigned. “I’m not _fine_ with that, but I told you about the torch I carried for you for thirty fucking years, so worst-case scenario, at least I haven’t got any unfinished business left.”

How long has Richie been thinking of worst-case scenarios? Eddie doesn’t know, but now he thinks—it’s been some time since Richie died, and he’s spent all that time with Pennywise in the back of his head like a burr persistently stuck to his jeans. “_We’re_ unfinished business,” Eddie says, now. “You’re not gonna fuck off and leave me with this fucking—mid-life crisis, asshole.” _Promise me that,_ he wants to beg. _Promise me that you’ll stay._

But the words stick in his throat, and all he can think of is his mother grasping at his arm, begging him to stay. _Stay with me, Eddie-bear,_ she had begged, _tell me that you love me. Stay with me, I’m the only one who knows you, who loves you, who can keep you safe from harm._

Richie strokes his thumb over Eddie’s knuckles, his own grip loose, and the steady touch tugs Eddie out of his memory. There’s nothing of It in his eyes, no malice or shadows, just affection and something that Eddie can’t quite pin down. “You say it like that, you romantic,” he says, “how could I? I’ll stick around, as long as I can. I can’t make any guarantees it’ll be a long while, but until then, sure as shit you’re not gonna get rid of me.”

“Good,” says Eddie, “I don’t want to,” and he leans up to kiss him.

\--

When they finally catch up to the others in the Plaza Inn, there’s a stack of pancakes waiting for Richie. He immediately falls on them with all the grace and patience of a starved vulture, and Eddie can only steal a single bite before Richie’s practically demolished the whole thing. From anyone else he’d be more concerned, but Richie had barely any more grace while eating when he was thirteen than he does now.

“You okay?” Ben asks, because Ben’s the sort of person who would be concerned.

“I’m fine,” says Richie, while eating.

“Don’t talk while you’re eating, asshole, that’s just basic table manners,” says Eddie, trying to discreetly steal a bit of pancake. Richie, without looking or even commenting, bats Eddie’s fork away with his own.

“I forgot what you two were like back in the day,” says Stan, resigned, rubbing over the bridge of his nose.

“Remember the hammock?” says Ben. “I’m still a little surprised it never broke, they used to fight all the time over it.”

“I remember,” says Bev, “and they were the only ones who had a ten-minute rule for using it, too.” She nods to Richie, who’s sponging up the honey with the last bits of pancakes on his plate, “He’d get into the hammock and then Eddie would come right after him yelling about the rule.”

“We’re _right fucking here_,” Eddie snaps, indignant, his cheeks burning. He remembers the hammock, all right. Mostly he remembers doing all he could to get Richie’s attention, up to and including invading his space in the hammock and pulling his glasses off, because when Richie looked right at him, Eddie’s crappy lungs seemed to grow and grow until they were as wide as airplane runways. Looking back, that might’ve been some sort of sign right there about both his crush on Richie and just how false his asthma truly was.

Richie swallows the last of his pancakes, and says, “Yeah, I remember the hammock. Didn’t we fall off the one time?”

“God, now I remember,” Eddie mutters, scrubbing his hand over his face at the memory of it. “I was trying to grab the comic from out of your hands and we overbalanced. And then I stole the comic while you were laughing at me.”

“Huh,” says Richie, his eyebrows pulling together in confusion. “I don’t—I don’t remember it that way.” He pauses, then sets his fork down, glaring down at the plate like it’s done something mortally offensive to him.

“I’m not surprised,” says Ben, tapping his temple. “Some things are still taking their time in coming back. Everything important’s back, but there’s still a few gaps here and there.”

“Yeah,” says Richie, looking up with a tight note to his smile, “yeah, I, uh, figured as much. Anyway! What did we wanna talk about so much that it cut into date night?”

“We have date nights almost every night,” Eddie says. “Just let us have one night devoted to figuring out how to fix this shit.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll leave you two lovebirds alone in your dreams after tonight,” says Bev.

“_Please,_” Stan says.

“But it was about Mrs. Kersh,” Bev continues, and Richie straightens up in his seat like her words have shocked him awake. “You’re the closest to the story, right now. She went looking for her father. Didn’t she?”

Richie says nothing, but squeezes his eyes shut as if concentrating on something, then lets out a slow breath. “Yeah,” he says, opening his eyes. “I think—it’s a little murky, and if I were you guys I’d take everything I say with a jar’s worth of salt, but Sarah Kersh spent a shitload of time in her later years looking into what happened to her father. Because she wanted closure, maybe.”

“At first, but then she started really digging into Derry. We read her letters, they sound wilder the more she digs,” says Eddie. “And, by the way, deciphering them was fucking hard because she wrote like a goddamn chicken and abbreviated a ton of shit—”

“She found a ritual while she was doing research,” Bev quickly cuts in.

“Her ritual obviously did not fucking work, or we wouldn’t be here,” says Richie. “Also, god, guys, I love you but if the next words out of your mouth are _Native American tribal ritual_—”

“Oh, no, of course not,” says Stan, taking up the thread. “Apparently she swiped it from a folk tale from Scotland, but she didn’t deign to mention any details about it. But she figured out if she believed hard enough in the ritual, then it might work.”

“That’s barely any better,” Richie points out, incredulous. “What, we’re going off fairy tales now? Jesus _Christ_. Anyway, it didn’t work! Otherwise,” he throws his hand out to the side to indicate the artificial Disneyland, the dream around them, all five of them, “we wouldn’t be here! If it had worked, none of what happened back in ‘89 would’ve happened.”

“So why didn’t it work, Richie?” Ben asks, and there he is, seeing the flaw, seeing the thing that needs fixing or making, the hole that needs filling. Ben’s always been good at planning and building things, and twenty-seven years later Eddie can see how he’s refined that skill, how it plays into his other skills. Ben at thirteen learned by trial and error while building their clubhouse. Ben at forty leans forward now, clasping his hands on the table in front of him, as if he’s caught sight of something in a proposal that’s piqued his interest. “She believed, didn’t she? Do you have any idea what went wrong?”

“She took too long,” says Richie. “And she didn’t have the other two with her—they’d died barely ten or so years after the second time around.”

Beverly sucks in a breath, and her voice bubbles up in the back of Eddie’s mind. _We don’t make it another twenty years._ “They faced It,” she says, “like we did. And It changed them the same way it changed _us_.”

“Bingo,” says Richie.

Stan swallows, looking, for a moment, green enough to puke. Eddie absurdly hopes he doesn’t, because it would be very awkward to have to explain to the nice Disneyland employees why their friend’s just thrown up all over their table, before he remembers that this is a dream and there _are_ no employees. It’s just them.

He knocks his ankle into Stan’s anyway, and sees him relaxing a notch. Good. Between the five of them the only person who should be worrying his head enough to possibly throw up is Eddie. He’s a champion at worrying. It’s his default state, usually, although nowadays it’s become less prevalent while he focuses on Operation: Get Richie Out of the Sewers.

“So there’s a time limit,” says Stan. “And people who have to be there.”

“Yeah, and a fuckload of belief, can’t forget that,” says Eddie.

“What else did she miss?” Ben asks. “Can you say that?”

Richie opens his mouth, then freezes and shuts it, shaking his head. “I think you guys are on your own for the rest,” he says, quietly. “It can’t get to me here, not with the tokens, but it’s _waiting_ for a shot. I’m already pushing it with helping, and,” he nods towards Ben, “Haystack’s not protected the same way.”

“Isn’t there any way you could—” Bev starts.

“No,” says Richie, his voice almost singsong, and the cold weight of dread drops into Eddie’s stomach, like an anchor dropping off a ship. Or a dead body weighed down by rocks, dropping off into the river. “There was just enough for three. ‘S’a magic number, you see.” He pauses, clearly taking in the horrified and deeply disturbed faces around him, says, “Shit and fuck I am going to _kill_ that fucking clown.”

“Con-fucking-gratulations,” Eddie says, “I watched that movie about kids killing their families on tape, read the entire Song of Ice and Fire series, and _that_ is the most disturbing rhyme I ever fucking heard.”

“You try being possessed,” says Richie, darkly. “I hear ‘em every day.”

“Okay, we need to do this as fast as possible just off that,” says Ben. “That wasn’t even particularly bloody and it still gave me chills.”

“We didn’t exactly have much time anyway,” says Stan. “How long do you think we have, Rich?”

“I honestly don’t know,” says Richie, picking at his sleeve, looking down. “See, I don’t try to think about how much time I’ve got left until the clown ghost sitting in the back of my head decides it’s done waiting for me to let it fully take over.” He raises his head now, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and says, “But if I really had to guess? I don’t—I don’t think I’d be able to make it past December.”

“That’d be a pretty shitty Christmas present,” says Eddie, weakly, a lump growing in his throat at the thought.

Bev says nothing, but she looks at Richie with sad eyes. When Richie meets her gaze, a whole conversation seems to pass between them, before he looks away.

“Not like I’m the one giving it,” says Richie, his voice weak and tired. “So whatever ritual Bill and Mike are looking for, they better hurry it up. And fast.”


	12. creeping on the edge of the dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Ruelle's "Up in Flames".
> 
> **content warnings:** body horror, possession, Richie doubts his own reality, discussion of an OC's elderly relative's serious illness and usage of imagery related to it to scare the shit out of said OC. OC makes it out of her encounter unscathed if terrified, but it's very clear It wants to eat her. brief mention of past brutal torture and murder in Derry's backstory, canonical to the books (Claude Heroux's rampage and the reasoning behind it, behind "clown did it"). not a warning, but there are hints of Bill/Mike/Audra starting to form.

By dint of being the one most familiar with the coffeemaker, as well as the host, Eddie’s the one who has to brew four cups of coffee the next day. He makes a fifth one, out of habit, and dumps four sugars into it. That cup, he places near the kitchen sink. “Can’t believe your dad was a dentist and you _still_ drink your coffee that sweet,” he says. “He’s probably rolling in his fucking grave right now.”

“He’s been doing that since I got a Netflix special, that’s nothing new,” Richie’s voice says from the drains, a little amused. “Live a little! Put some more sugar into your coffee, I promise it’s not gonna rot your teeth immediately.”

“No,” says Eddie. “Hey, Rich?”

“Yeah?”

_I love you._ Eddie places his hand on the marble of the kitchen counter, the words sticking right in his throat. Goddammit, this should be _easier_. They’ve kissed, they’ve held hands, they’ve been on _dates_, for Christ’s sakes. It should be easier to just say those damn words, he shouldn’t be here trying to pull them out of the murk of his throat, like trying to pull a panicking child out of quicksand.

“Wish you were here,” he says, instead.

“Oh, me too, Eds,” says Richie. “See ya ‘round. Got something I need to do.”

So Eddie takes the mugs to what used to be the townhouse’s entrance desk, where Ben’s set up his sleek laptop and he, Bev and Stan are squeezed together behind it. He comes in just in time to hear Stan say, “—Key’s gone?”

“Yeah,” says Audra’s voice over the tinny speakers, sounding a little shaken. “Like you all said it would.”

“Was there anyone on the key, before?” Ben asks, frowning.

“No,” says Audra. “No one. The only one left was that artist guy, Freemantle, and I heard he ran as soon as he’d finished his last painting. Like he knew.”

“The Alice over Duma Key,” says Bev, softly.

“Uh, what?” Eddie asks, and all three startle as he maneuvers around the desk, setting the tray of mugs down on the table. “What happened to Duma Key?”

“You didn’t hear the news?” Audra asks, over the laptop, her face framed by a little Skype window. She looks somewhat thrown, a little more human than the woman in the red carpet photos that Myra used to coo over sometimes, her makeup wearing off, her hair somewhat disheveled from walking around. Mike and Bill aren’t anywhere to be seen just yet, but Eddie imagines they’ll come in soon enough. “There was this huge storm off Florida. People are still scrambling to figure out just what the hell happened, but we do know that Duma Key—which you guys visited—was hit pretty damn badly. Enough that there’s not much of it _left_ anymore.”

Eddie stares at her, then at Ben and Bev. “Wait, did you guys know that would happen?” he asks. “Is this like what almost happened with Stan?”

“What?” Audra asks.

“Clown thing,” says Stan. Then he pauses. “Wait, you know everything, right?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t really believe it when Bill told me,” says Audra, and she sounds almost sheepish now over that. “And then he told me why he went to Florida, and he mentioned that Freemantle could tell the future with his paintings and had painted Duma Key being destroyed. Which, yeah, sounded like something right out of an urban fantasy book, but he seemed pretty convinced about it. And the clown.”

“But you believe him now?” Bev asks. “Do you believe us?”

“It all sounds so goddamn insane,” says Audra. “Scars coming back, a clown in the sewers that eats children, a possessed childhood friend, rituals and _magic_—that’s the stuff of novels, like what Bill writes.” She runs her hand through her hair and says, “And then this thing with Duma Key…I don’t think I believed him or Mike, not really, until we checked the news just an hour ago. And if that was true, then that means—all of it’s true.” Her voice is hushed, and horrified.

“Unfortunately,” says Stan.

Ben nods. “It’s not an easy thing to believe, no,” he says. “We could barely believe it ourselves when we all came back to Derry, even as we were remembering. But it’s all true, and it all happened. It’s still happening.”

“Tozier,” says Audra, suddenly. “Bill skimped on the details over what happened to Tozier, he just said his friend needed to be rescued—at the time when he told me about the clown and what happened, I thought he was just, well, not remembering things right, trauma can do that to someone, but he wasn’t, was he? That really all went down that way?”

“There was stuff Bill missed out on, because the clown split us all up at one point,” says Stan, “and forgive us if we don’t exactly want to talk about some of the things Bill missed, but otherwise—yeah. It all went down that way.”

“So you’re really going to try to bring him back?” Audra asks.

“We have to,” says Eddie, suddenly, and his voice sounds strange even to him. Firm. Stubborn. The sort of voice that doesn’t brook any argument, that gets people’s attention without really rising in volume. It’s rare for his own voice to sound like that, usually he has to _yell_ over everybody else, and back when his mother was still alive, she’d steamroll right over any protests he had anyway, and his voice had shrunk so it wouldn’t be squashed. (Or at least it used to be rare, he thinks.) “Seven people went into the house on Neibolt Street and seven people _should’ve_ come out.”

It’s the truth, and what surprises him is how not surprised he is by the words. Like it was sitting in the back of his mind this whole time, simply waiting to be acknowledged and spoken aloud. _We started this with seven of us, and we should’ve ended with seven, and It knew that. There is power in all of us together, that’s why it tried to take Stanley out of the game, that’s why it took Richie, because if one goes then the circle is broken and It has a chance._ “It was scared,” he says out loud.

“It?” says Audra.

“The clown,” says Eddie. “Or—not just a clown, I guess? I mean, it is just a shitty fucking clown, that was the form it usually took for us, but it could turn into other things too. We really either called it Pennywise or just It because we didn’t have any other name for it.”

“Straight out of one of Bill’s novels,” Audra murmurs. “What do you mean, It was scared?” she asks. “What about seven people who should’ve come out?”

“It fed on fear,” says Eddie. “If you were scared of it you gave it power. We stopped being scared of it, after it—hurt Richie, that badly.” Eddie hadn’t really had much room for fear then, too busy denying what was happening in front of him, telling Richie that he was going to be _fine_, everything was going to be _fine_, and all he needed to do was to hold still and let Eddie work. “We were too fucking pissed off to be scared, we were already angry enough to come down to actually fight It, and that _scared_ It. It knew that if all seven of us made it out alive then It would be dead and _gone_, and it needed to at least try to take one of us down with it.” Something cold drops into Eddie’s stomach just then, because—It had been aiming for _him_, he knows that. Richie had just thought faster than It, and had pulled Eddie down and crouched over him.

If Eddie had died instead, what would Richie have done? Would he have ventured down into the sewers to bring him back? Would he have gone down into the sinkhole with a shovel in hand and a prayer on his lips? Eddie wants to think he wouldn’t, but—if someone’s willing to die for you, that probably means they’re willing to do just about anything for you.

Richie has loved him for a while, and Eddie loves him back, that much is true. He just wonders if he deserves that kind of love—all he’s ever known is the poisoned sort, the kind with strings attached. What does he do with the sort of love Richie has for him? How does he keep it untouched by the poison left behind on his heart?

“Because if we killed It with only six of us left, it could still stand a chance of coming back and going up against us,” says Bev, pulling Eddie out of his thoughts. “If It broke the circle, It had a better chance of picking off the rest of us. Like one of Bill’s gorier novels, what was its name again—”

“_The Mist over the Mountains_?” says Ben.

“Without the actual mist to hide behind,” says Stan.

“I remember that movie,” says Audra. “Almost everyone _died_ in that movie.”

“Yeah,” says Eddie, trying to push away the memory of watching in abject horror as the main characters had been cut ruthlessly down by the monsters in the mist, “we’re trying for a better ending than that.”

“Are we talking about _Mist_?” says Bill, poking his head into frame. Audra huffs out a tired laugh, and budges up to make room for him.

“Yeah, we’re talking shit about the ending,” says Eddie, “where fucking _everyone_ died because the monsters can _teleport through the mist_? What the fuck were you thinking with that ending, huh? There wasn’t a single word about it before you just dropped it on us out of nowhere!”

“I thought it was fucking terrifying,” says Ben, because of course he does, “and it actually made sense that we wouldn’t know, because it’s not as if we’d know how they moved, not at first.” He moves to pick up his mug and takes a sip. “Although a few hints could’ve stood to be more obvious,” he admits.

“Ben,” says Bill, “thank fucking god for you.”

“Hey, budge up,” says Mike, off-camera, and Audra obligingly pushes Bill up until only half his face is onscreen so Mike can settle in beside her, too. Even on a computer screen, even with an ocean between them, Eddie can see the effect being away from Derry is having on Mike, the easier smile, the light in his eyes that hadn’t been there when they’d all first met in the Jade. God, it feels like a million years ago, now.

Audra leans into Mike’s space, like they’re old, old friends. It’s good to see that she’s adjusting to having another Loser around, Eddie can’t imagine it was easy for her to have to share her husband’s time with a man he’d never even mentioned before taking off unexpectedly to Maine one day. It probably hasn’t been easy on Bill, either, or Mike, but they seem to be holding up admirably well. Must be the Scotland air or something.

“We found something in Scotland,” says Mike, and oh, okay, right, the reason why they started this call in the first place—they have to update each other. Eddie nudges closer to Ben, who shifts closer to Stan, who has to push into Bev’s space so they can all squeeze into a single Skype window frame. “There’s a place called Carterhaugh that apparently used to be home to the Sìth, up until the early 1500s.”

“The what?” Bev asks.

“Fairies,” says Eddie, absently. “Like—with wings and all.”

“Sort of,” says Mike. “I did some digging, and I don’t think fairies had anything to do with everything that happened here. For one thing, the records I could find, and the stories passed on via oral tradition, hew very, very closely to Its patterns—every seven years people would start to go missing, and strange sightings and sudden violent incidents would occur.”

“No c-c-clown,” says Bill, the stutter slipping out for just a moment before he hesitates and continues, “not as we know them, but many of the sightings mentioned an unearthly woman-shaped figure that could change shape into something else.”

“Seven years?” Ben asks.

“Apparently the hibernation period tends to vary depending on the location,” says Mike. “I think it’s the culture here in Carterhaugh. They put a lot of stock into their folk tales, it’s not a surprise that the being here conformed more to their stories than It did.”

“Anyway,” Bill says, “we came across this ballad that got our interest. Have you guys ever heard of someone named Tam Lin?”

“No,” says Bev.

“Doesn’t ring a bell, sorry,” says Ben, shaking his head.

“Haven’t heard of them,” says Stan.

“I have,” says Eddie, thinking of Sean saying, _It was like Tam fucking Lin all over again._ “Just the name, though, not much else, from someone who ran into Richie in the Barrens and then ran off. I’ve still got his number, I could call him.”

“Yeah, do that as soon as possible,” says Bill, running a hand through his hair. There’s grey in his hair now, in Ben’s too, and Eddie’s seen a few grey strands in his own hair, combing it back in the mirror. He doesn’t want to have to fight Pennywise _again_, the last time had nearly killed them all, had killed Richie. He doesn’t know if he’s got the strength in him for another one, but—they’re going to have to, or else they’re all dead. “He’s a character in a ballad here in Carterhaugh. The legend says that he was a human knight in service to the Sìth, but he was going to be sacrificed on a Halloween night because of some tradition, every seven years, to offer up someone as a tithe to hell.”

“Let me guess,” says Stan. “When you dug deeper, the fairies weren’t the ones that were involved.”

“Bill and I have this friend,” says Audra, then, taking up the thread of the story, “who lives here in Carterhaugh and was working through digitizing the old records and diaries in her possession here. When we asked her for anything about Tam Lin, she said she had fragments from the fifteenth century.” She jerks a thumb towards Mike, and says, “You should’ve seen his _face_.”

“They were pieces of history!” says Mike, with a soft huff of laughter as he raises his hands, defensive. Good. If anyone deserves to be happy and excited over history out of all of them it’s Mike. Eddie can’t imagine living here in fucking Derry knowing about the clown for twenty-seven goddamn years. “Derry’s written history doesn’t stretch back that long. Having something in my hands from the 1400s was—surreal, to say the least.”

“Right?” says Ben, eyes lighting up. That’s right, before Mike, Ben had been the historian of their group, had been fascinated with Derry’s dark history on a level that had honestly disturbed Eddie a little, back then. Now, he still doesn’t quite get that enthusiasm, but whatever makes them happy, he supposes. “Having something from the past that’s tangible, that can be held in your hands—it’s pretty amazing.”

“Nerds,” says Audra, sounding impossibly fond.

“Most of it was a little too damaged to make out the details, but Tam Lin was a real knight,” says Bill, breaking in and shooting his wife a look, “and his lover Janet, from the ballad, was a real noblewoman—her chambermaid kept this diary, wrote a lot of things down. They were married before he disappeared, and there were rumors he’d been taken by the fae. Rumors that got a lot more prevalent when people started seeing him in the waters.”

“The diary’s incomplete, so we don’t know how Janet found out about the rumors, or how she figured out what was actually at fault, or even many of the details of how she brought him back,” says Mike. “But she did, and she did, and _she did_.” He holds up a steno notebook, and says, “I copied out what I could of the ritual she found, and how it played out in the ballad. There’s certainly some embellishments in the ballad, but the gist of it, in both the diary and the ballad, is that she caught the thing possessing her husband and exorcised it by holding onto Tam Lin’s body as it shifted through different forms.”

“What about the Deadlights?” Bev asks. “Did the diary mention anything about snuffing them out?”

“No,” says Mike, shaking his head. “Not yet.”

“We’re still trying to decipher it and translate it into English,” says Bill.

“And there’s a lot of damage done,” Mike adds. “We’re really working off fragments here. But the bottom line is, it’s _possible_. There’s just a lot of things that have to go _right_ for this to work.”

“Like what?” Eddie asks.

“Well,” says Audra, “for one thing, how’s your upper body strength?”

“Not bad?” Eddie hedges. “I mean, I can throw shit pretty far, but I’m not—I’m not exactly gonna do chin-ups any time soon.”

“I know someone who’d pay to see you do chin-ups,” says Bev.

“You won’t have to do chin-ups,” says Audra, “but you _are_ going to have a hell of a time. The ballad ends with Janet holding on to her knight while he changes forms, and I’m going to take a stab in the dark here and say that’s much, much harder than the song made it sound.”

“It’s always harder than it sounds,” says Bill, and honestly, yeah, he’s not wrong. The Ritual of Chüd had sounded weirdly easy, after all, so of course it all went completely to shit.

“And that’s if the ballad didn’t embellish that part too much,” says Mike.

“Do we need all the ritual’s steps?” Bev asks. “Or can we just—coast by on the gist of it, if we don’t have a complete picture? Belief seemed to work well enough.”

“Not always,” says Eddie, thinking about Its claw bursting through Richie’s chest, the sick glistening tip jutting out of his body. It had been aiming for Eddie, would’ve gotten him if Richie hadn’t flipped them over in time, because Eddie had the audacity to throw a spear into its mouth and the sheer stupidity to believe that much would kill it dead. “Maybe there’s gotta be—I don’t know, _something_ we’re missing. Something Sarah Kersh almost had.”

“Sarah Kersh?” Bill asks.

“Bob Gray’s daughter,” Beverly explains. “The old woman in my dad’s old apartment—the crone, remember?”

“Didn’t she try to drown you?” Mike asks.

“I’m missing something here,” says Audra.

“Yeah, me too, I kind of didn’t join in for that part,” says Eddie, scratching the back of his neck and steadfastly not looking at Beverly, or the other Losers. Of the people who had jumped into the water to pull Beverly out of Its grasp, Eddie had not been one of them, too scared to dive down into the deep. Too fucking _scared_, always, until that last time, and look what that got him—Richie bleeding out into his jacket. _You’re braver than you think,_ Richie had said, but Eddie doesn’t always know if that’s true. If he was any braver he would’ve left Myra years ago, if he was any braver he would’ve been able to save Richie both times and dive to save Bev.

Mike says, “It tried to drown Beverly before we could get to its inner sanctum. Looking back, I think it was just toying with us then. After all, it thought it was gonna win.”

“Sarah Kersh, though,” says Bill, nudging Audra a little further away so that more of his face can be seen in the Skype window. “What about her?”

“Pennywise was a real person,” says Ben. “We saw him in the _very_ early parts of Derry’s history, when we were kids, but when I checked on my and Mike’s research, he wasn’t there anymore. His earliest appearance was in 1881, and he’d just come to town with a circus. 27 years after that—”

“—was the Ironworks explosion,” Mike completes for him.

“But before It started taking his shape more and more often,” says Ben, “he was a man, and he had a daughter who survived facing It. Like we did. And when she grew up, she started looking for ways to get her father back.” He shrugs. “Obviously it didn’t work, but we have her notes, and we have her history, and it’s better than nothing.”

“And we know It’s weak to being called out for what it is,” says Beverly. “We’re not completely unarmed.”

Stan takes a notebook out of the pocket of his coat, pulls a pen from his breast pocket, and writes something in it. When Eddie looks over, he’s mouthing _bitch king of bitch mountain_ to himself and giving a slight nod. Eddie tugs on his sleeve to pull him closer, and whispers in his ear, “Desperate house-clown?”

“No,” Stan murmurs back, “the women on _Desperate Housewives_ have a semblance of standards, and I’m not going to insult them.”

“All right,” says Bill, pulling Eddie and Stan’s attentions back to him, Mike and Audra on the screen. “Tell us about Mrs. Kersh, then.”

\--

“Crazy weather we’re havin’, yeah?” says the florist as Joan ducks into the flower shop. “Can’t be worse than that storm a couple months ago, though. Thought it’d flood out the whole town.”

Honestly, Joan wouldn’t really mourn too much if it did. Derry’s a hot fucking mess at the best of times, and although it’s starting to get better, it’s not doing it fast enough for her. As soon as she graduates, she’s gonna get the fuck out of here, maybe head to New York, land of bright lights and opportunity, where no one gives half a shit about the things small town people care too much about.

Big dreams for a little girl, she knows. But she’s seen people do it: skedaddle out of town and hit it big. Fuck, Bill Denbrough did it, and look where he is now, some big-shot author with actual movies being made out of his books and an actual movie star for a wife. Living the dream there, and all that.

After graduation. After they find a better treatment center for Nana. After she and Dana figure out—whatever it is they are to each other, besides “really close friends who kissed one time and co-interns under someone we’re pretty sure is a former mafia guy”. Hopefully Mr. Kaspbrak doesn’t figure out they’re onto him for a long while yet.

“It’d be a shame if it did,” she says to the florist out loud, giving the florist lady a cheery smile. “Any roses around? My Nana’s next treatment is coming up.”

“My, roses are _popular_ these days,” says the florist, scratching the back of her head. “We’re sellin’ them out like pancakes in the morning half the time.”

Joan’s heart plummets into the pit of her stomach. “They’re sold out?” she asks.

“Well,” says the florist. “Let me check.” She totters off into the back room, humming absently to herself. Joan sighs, then turns away, leaning her back on the counter.

There’s someone else in the flower shop with her. Big guy, six foot something, leather jacket, glasses and a mop of dark hair. Joan tenses for a moment, because something about him

(_him or it_)

sets off alarm bells ringing in the back of her mind. Which is ridiculous, really. Guy doesn’t seem to be doing anything but checking out flowers. He’s probably harmless. Probably. _Probably._ Well, he’s harmless to Joan, anyway, but something about him just feels—off. Wrong, somehow. Like a nightmare dragged out into reality.

There’s a bell on the counter that’s supposed to be used if a customer wants to call for assistance. Joan very slowly reaches for it.

“Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” says the guy, turning now to her, and oh, god. Oh, good fucking god. There’s a—There is a _hole_ in the guy’s chest. Not a hole in his shirt, but straight up, in his _chest_, big and wide and gaping and awful. She can see the _door_ through it, the cheerful sign reading _Sorry We’re Closed Come Back Tomorrow_ in loopy handwriting behind him. Is it dripping?

“Why not?” Joan manages. _Are you aware you have a hole in you right now?_ she thinks.

“She wouldn’t come,” says the guy, with a shrug. “Derry adults are pretty shitty at noticing what’s right next to them, most of the time.” He pauses, tilts his head to the side. “I’m not gonna hurt ya,” he says. “If. If that’s what you’re scared of. Trying my best not to, in fact.”

Joan inches closer to the edge of the counter. If she keeps her back to a wall, keeps her eyes on this guy, maybe he’ll never have a chance to.

“Yeah, solid strategy there,” says the guy, looking back at the flowers. “But I just—wanna buy some flowers. That’s all.”

“Bell’s right there,” Joan says. _You’ve got a hole in you._ That’s—That’s the sort of thing that’d be hugely obvious, right? Big-ass fucking chest wound like that, surely you’d feel it. Surely it’d put you down for the count. Right?

“Yeah, she wouldn’t hear it,” says the guy. Is it just her imagination, or are his eyes changing colors? “I just wanna know, are there any roses left over? I’ve been buying them from this shop every day for a while, but I don’t know how long till they run out.”

Does he really not notice? Joan could almost scream, she can feel it building in her chest. She coughs, instead, and forces a smile onto her face. “She mentioned they were getting pretty popular lately,” she says. “Maybe check back in a week or so? I’unno, man, I’m just here because—”

“—of _your **poor little nana,**_” the man says, his voice shifting, seemingly absently. He looks more preoccupied with the flowers than anything.

Joan sucks in a breath. _Sir, there is a hole in your chest and your voice just dropped into a different register and how did you know about Nana._ No. “I think,” she says, as politely as possible, because suddenly she’s not sure she can trust this man around the sweet old lady who runs this flower shop, “that you should probably leave.”

The man turns to look at her for a moment, and Joan’s throat seizes up tight, closing up to a pinhole. His eyes are like Nana’s, only—only they’re dead, she can see the maggots squirming in and out of one eye socket. Can see his skin growing paper-thin and stretching over his bones, like there’s a cancer eating him alive from the inside. Can see that there is nothing human about him, not in the way he looks at her, not in the way he moves, like a film on an old, lagging computer.

He steps towards her, mouth twisting and peeling back to show sharp, sharp teeth. “_**oh joanie,**_” he says, “_**don’t you want to give your nana a kiss before she goes? or are you too scared to see her go? little baby joanie girl, wanna have an up-close look at how nana’s gonna die?**_”

She backs up, a scream trapped in her throat. She is going to die here. Oh, god. She’s gonna _die_.

Another step, foot dragging across the floor, then he—stops. Like a malfunctioning machine, trying to decide which commands to follow this time. Then he steps back, a hand darting up to cover his mouth, eyes flickering from gold to blue. “**sorry, sorry, fuck,** I’m—” he stops, then shakes his head. “You’ve gotta get out of here, Joan,” he says, and when he drops his hand his teeth look human again. “I mean it. Don’t go near the storm drains, just go straight home to your mom, okay? I can keep it back for a little while but I need you to stay the fuck away.”

“How do you know my name?” Joan demands. “How do you know about my Nana? What the _fuck_ are you?”

“A **good magician doesn’t reveal his tricks,**” says the man, before shutting his eyes and scratching at the spots of white appearing on the insides of his wrist. Red blood wells up with every scratch, and spills on the floor. “Please,” he says, “you need to _go_.”

Joan goes. She goes so fast it’s like her ass is on fire, sprints out of the shop with barely a regretful thought to spare for leaving empty-handed. She glances briefly at a passing storm drain and half-swears she can see the glint of glasses in it, but it’s gone as fast as it came, and when she gets home, she comes home to a surprised mother, who really hadn’t expected her back from her errand so soon.

It’s only when she’s back in her room, exhausted from the adrenaline crash, that she realizes—she never asked about that hole in his chest.

Well. Never fucking mind that, then.

\--

Three Losers ride out of Derry, with one left behind, waving at them from the townhouse’s steps.

Eddie doesn’t blame them for wanting to go. As much as they’d all wanted to stay and keep working, they still have lives on the outside—buildings to design, dresses to finish working on, a divorce to grit their teeth through, accounts to look over, a wife to reassure, all the things they can’t do if they’re in Derry. It’s just something about this place, Eddie supposes, that makes it all seem a little less real, a little less urgent.

Or that’s probably just Eddie projecting.

Bev had hugged him on the way to the car, had said, “We’ll be back.” Ben had hugged him as soon as they were done loading their shit into the back and promised the same thing.

Eddie ended up pulling Stan into a hug just before they left, and he’d said, “I’m really sorry to have to keep dragging you back here—”

“Shut up, Eddie,” Stan had said, and hugged him back. “I’m here because I chose to be. I’m sorry we keep having to leave you alone.”

“Yeah, no, I’ve got Richie to keep me company,” said Eddie.

“I’m even sorrier,” Stan had said, and cracked a smile as Eddie slugged his shoulder.

Now Eddie sits on the porch, watching the car disappear. It’s a little like old times, when his friends would have to drop him back off at his house, and he’d sit on the front steps to watch them go before his mother called him back inside. As soon as the car is out of sight, he stands and goes back inside.

When he checks the kitchen, the mug he’d left there for Richie is gone. In its place is a Post-It note: _meet me in basement love Richie._ A rose sprouts out of the last letter in Richie’s name, a shitty little doodle that nevertheless gets Eddie to smile a little to himself. Sap.

God, he should really have seen this a lot sooner than this. Sure, the other Losers tended to blow through Eddie’s house often, and it wasn’t like Richie was the only one who crawled through Eddie’s window—Bev had done it once to avoid Eddie’s mother, clambering up the tree with a grace Richie didn’t have—but Richie was the only one who did it weekly. And, in turn, Richie’s window was the only one Eddie would willingly risk climbing through, despite the height and the possibility of cracking his skull open on the way down.

He takes two sandwiches down to the basement, one baloney, the other a salmon-BLT sandwich he’d found off the Internet. When he gets there, Richie’s reading through one of Mike’s old books, _A History of Crime in Maine_, sitting with one leg pulled up.

“Hey, Rich,” says Eddie, sitting down next to him.

Richie nearly jumps out of his skin, shutting the book. “Jesus _Christ_, Eddie, warn a guy,” he says, with a huff. Patches of white stand out on his neck, and there are thin lines on the inside of his wrist. Almost without thinking, Eddie’s hand darts to where he’d usually keep medical supplies in a fanny pack, only for his fingers to find nothing but thin air. “Mike left some interesting notes in the margins here, y’know? Plus Post-Its.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” says Eddie. “He made corrections to some of the entries, did you see? The Sleepy Silver Dollar, the Bradley Gang, the Black Spot—”

“He made one mistake,” says Richie, flipping the pages to the Sleepy Silver Dollar. “Here, see? He mentions this was when It woke up.”

“You mean It didn’t wake up then?” Eddie asks.

“Oh, no, it was already awake by then,” says Richie. “It was the union organizers getting brutally murdered that woke It up. I think the screaming being muffled by jamming the screamer’s own toes in their mouth was what did it, personally, but I haven’t bothered to check.” He sighs. “Sure as fuck it didn’t mind pushing Heroux that far, though. The more fear the merrier it was.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything, just hands the baloney sandwich over and nudges his elbow. Finally, Richie puts the book to the side and takes the sandwich from his hand, taking a tentative bite. Eddie nibbles at his own sandwich, leaning against Richie.

“Gonna take a wild guess and say this is all new information to you,” says Eddie, breaking the comfortable silence between them.

“Bingo,” says Richie, shuddering. “It’s like having a true crime podcast beamed directly to your head.”

“God, I haven’t gone on a true crime binge in a while,” says Eddie. “Remember when we used to watch Unsolved Mysteries whenever your parents were out?”

“Yeah,” says Richie, with a small smile. “We’d sneak down to the couch, all sneaky-like, which was fucking stupid because it wasn’t like anyone else was gonna be there.”

“And I brought along one blanket so we wouldn’t be cold,” says Eddie, “but really I wanted to hide under it with you, because you were a total pussy when they started really getting into the gorier shit.”

“Oh, like _you_ weren’t as freaked out as I was when they started talking about a _haunted hotel_,” Richie scoffs. “I think I remember you clinging to my hand so tightly I thought you’d fucking break something.”

“Maybe I just wanted to hold your hand, asshole,” says Eddie.

“You almost _broke my thumb_.”

“Fuck you, you climbed into my lap when they were talking about fucking poltergeists.” Eddie turns his head then to look at Richie, sees the way his mouth is twisting like he’s trying to hold in a smile. “Hey,” he says, “remember when we tried to go looking for that French plane, what was it called—”

“_L’Oiseau Blanc,_” says Richie, in an exaggerated French accent. “Yeah, we were so fucking sure it landed in the Barrens.”

“Yeah, and we roped Bill and Stanley in,” says Eddie, the memory bubbling up now to the forefront of his mind. “I think at some point we thought Stan found something, like a dead body or some shit, but turned out he had just seen a goose that was apparently a rare bird and wanted us to take a look too.”

“You walked through a blueberry bush and broke out in hives,” says Richie fondly. “And then the goose tried its best to kill me and Bill. Scratched him up so good he still had the scar over his eye when we fought It.” He looks over at Eddie, and a corner of his mouth quirks upward in a small smile. “I’m still pretty sure I saw the engine that day.”

“Keep fucking dreaming,” says Eddie.

“No, I’m telling you, I bet it’s still there,” says Richie. “We could solve the mystery. We just have to find it.”

“Or you end up finding like, the fort we tried to build when we were nine,” says Eddie. “The one we gave up on ‘cause it kept collapsing.”

“Should’ve known Ben then,” says Richie. “That clubhouse he built for us has been standing for goddamn _years_, by now. Could stand until the next century, probably.”

“Y’know what, I think I can believe that,” says Eddie.

The silence stretches on between them, after that, as they eat their sandwiches. Eddie’s hand settles on top of Richie’s—he’s cold, out here in the real world, like a corpse. Which Eddie supposes Richie is, technically, just animated by a murderous clown ghost.

He squeezes Richie’s hand, just because. Richie glances over, and says, “Yeah?” through a mouthful of baloney.

“Eat your sandwich,” says Eddie. “Don’t mind me, I’m just glad you’re here.”

“You romantic,” says Richie, but he smiles, a real one, a little lopsided.

“Yeah, don’t talk with your mouth full,” says Eddie, knocking his ankle into Richie’s. “I know for a fact your mom kept telling you to quit doing it, did it ever sink in?”

“Nah, I just learned not to do it around her,” says Richie. He finishes off the rest of his sandwich after that, and says, “Can you—Can you turn on the radio, see if something happened?”

“Why?” Eddie asks, already getting up to grab the radio and start fiddling around with the knobs. Unlike Mike, he doesn’t have much experience in listening into police conversations illegally, so it takes him a while for the crackle of voices to fill the air.

There isn’t really _much_. Traffic violations, muggings, at least one chase where the officer’s calling for back-up, but there’s no one calling in a dead body. Honestly, there hasn’t really been much since they killed It, the violence slowly, steadily seeping out of the town, but in Eddie’s opinion it’s not doing a fast enough job of leaving. Maybe because It’s still here, possessing the man beside him.

Richie relaxes beside him, tension visibly bleeding out of his shoulders with every word. “Oh, good,” he says, after a few minutes.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Eddie asks.

“I didn’t kill anyone, what’s there to talk about?” Richie says. “She’s fine. Probably scared as shit, but she’s fine. You’ll see her in the library later.”

“Wait, wait,” says Eddie, sitting up, “who was it? Rich, did you scare my boss? Jesus fucking—”

“It was an _intern_,” says Richie, throwing his hands up. “And she’s fine! She’s okay. I’m pretty fucking sure she’s okay, we’d hear about it from the cops if she wasn’t. She got away fine, just—maybe won’t visit my mom’s old flower shop for a while.”

“You visited a flower shop?” Eddie asks. “What, looking like that?”

“The florist usually doesn’t give a shit,” says Richie, which—usually? He’s been there before? So that’s where all the roses are coming from. “This is _Derry_. Once you’re an adult, you don’t even notice the weird shit anymore. She didn’t even comment on the gaping chest hole, not the way the kid wanted to—what was her name, Joan?”

“Oh,” says Eddie. “One of _those_ interns, then.”

“Yeah, maybe be nicer to her for a while,” says Richie. “It traumatized her something fierce, showing her—well, trying to show her something fucked up, anyway.” He rubs over his elbow, absently, frowning down at his hands. “She’s got a lot on her mind these days,” he says, simply. “Cut her some slack.”

“Fine, fine,” Eddie sighs, because—well, Richie’s not wrong, is the thing. Eddie himself had barely been able to work, mere days after Richie’s death. All he could think of was that it wasn’t fucking _fair_, that the world was somehow still spinning after Pennywise’s death, as though nothing had happened, as though there hadn’t been a battle for Derry’s very soul. “What, did you turn into an Excel spreadsheet or something?”

“How the fuck would I even do that?” Richie asks, squinting up at him. “Turn into a computer just permanently stuck on an Excel spreadsheet? No, it was—something else, and it was really fucked up.”

“What was it?”

Richie hesitates, then shakes his head. “Think it’s some private shit,” he says, “but I can tell you, it was a little too close to your leper for my tastes.”

Oh. “Jesus, Rich,” Eddie says, softly. “She’s okay?”

“I mean, I _think_ so,” says Richie. “I’m never sure. But something tells me we’d hear about it if she wasn’t—at the very least you’d start seeing missing posters.”

That’s the thing, Eddie hasn’t seen them in a while. The last one was of the kid they met in the Chinese restaurant, and they all know what happened there, poor fucking kid. Yeah, Derry’s still a shithole town, because human beings in general tend to prefer not to change, but ever since It died, Eddie’s noticed the slow march of progress, here and there, noticed kids coming out more and more often, like they know something big and scary’s passed. Kids are a lot more perceptive than adults.

Richie shifts a little in his seat, running his teeth over his lower lip. “Least I think so anyway,” he says, and the uncertainty catches Eddie off his guard. Then he remembers: right. Pennywise is taking up space in Richie’s head. “I could be wrong.”

“Want me to check?” Eddie asks. “I’ve got her number. I had to get everyone’s numbers in the financial department after Cathy put me in charge, and it’s a lot less people than there really should be. Which is fucking _bullshit_.”

“Because of the budget and the incompetence and all that shit, I know, I know,” says Richie, which—oh. He _listened_. It’s probably more of a testament to just how bored he is in the sewers than it is to how much of a good boyfriend he is, but it warms Eddie’s heart anyway. “I—yeah, I’d like that. Please?”

“Okay,” Eddie says, already getting up. “Come on, follow me out.”


	13. but you're not rising with me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from REO Speedwagon's "(I Believe) Our Time Is Gonna Come".

So Eddie calls Joan outside the townhouse, sitting near a storm drain so Richie can hear him.

“Hello, Mr. Kaspbrak?” says Joan when she finally picks up, sounding somewhat wary. “Is—Is something wrong? Is it the records? Oh, f—it’s the records, isn’t it? I _knew_ I shouldn’t have let Dash at them but I swear to you he _said_—”

“Whoa, hey, slow down,” says Eddie. “No, it’s not the records, but I _will_ be checking them when I come into work now that you mention it.” Dash is fucking terrible at keeping the records straight, goddammit, why did she let him _touch them_, now Eddie’s gonna have to go over them with a fine-toothed comb once more. Goddammit. He has meetings with the board today. “I just—wanted to ask you if you knew where, uh, what was the title, _The Principles and Practice of Medicine_ was. If we’ve got a copy.”

“Well, no, and if we do, it wouldn’t be the latest edition, Mr. Kaspbrak, sir,” says Joan. “Is. Is there a reason why you’re asking me this?”

“Just wanted to be prepared is all,” Eddie says, not feeling all that bad for lying. Honestly, he’d just made the title up on the spot. There are so many medical textbooks it’s possible one of them is entitled _The Principles and Practice of Medicine_, it’s vague enough as a title. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” says Joan, the wariness in her voice ramping up a notch. Is he really that bad a boss? “I’ll check. Thanks for calling,” she adds, before she hangs up on him.

Richie, from the sewers, says, deadpan, “They think you’re a former Mafia enforcer.”

Eddie stares down at the storm drain, then says, “You’re fucking with me.”

“If I were fucking with you, I’d be telling you they think you’re whatever the gay equivalent of a Playboy bunny is,” says Richie, peeking out from the storm drain. “It’s the scar, I bet. And the yelling. Like eighty percent of what they see you do is just yelling at people over the phone to do their fucking jobs.”

“How—I got the scar from _Bowers_, you know that,” says Eddie. “And it wasn’t even badass! I just got fucking stabbed in the face in the bathroom. And the yelling’s just because the repair company’s giving us the runaround. Again. The fuckers.” If he could, he’d march right down to their headquarters and browbeat them into doing as Cathy kept specifically asking them to do and as they kept completely failing to do.

“Well, I know _that_,” says Richie, “you’re a dorky square who’s never touched a gun in his life.”

“Now who’s the dork?” Eddie asks, crouching low. “Nobody’s said _square_ in years, dumbfuck, catch up with the rest of us.”

“Fuck you, asswipe, I’m ahead of the curve,” says Richie, arms resting on the edge of the storm drain, the corners of his mouth tugging upward. It’s comforting, sliding back into their back-and-forth, and Eddie welcomes the ease with which they snipe at each other, sharp barbs gentled by the fact that there’s no real heat or intention to hurt. “No, but seriously, I know you’re not, but your interns have some really fucking active imaginations. You know one of them’s got a corkboard?”

“Oh, Jesus, really?” says Eddie. In his mind’s eye, he can see the interns gathered around a corkboard with red yarn strung up, black-and-white pictures dangling from the walls. Like Ben’s Derry research, only ridiculously off the mark. “A fucking conspiracy board?”

“_Yeah_,” says Richie, nodding, clearly trying very hard to suppress a laugh. “I got a peek. Not much more than that, I didn’t feel like pushing It, but those kids have got some fucking wild imaginations.”

“I’d love it if it wasn’t focused on me,” Eddie grumbles, more for the sake of grumbling than anything. He drops his hand to the storm drain, feels Richie’s cold, clammy hand reach up and squeeze twice before letting go. “What the fuck was I expecting, I guess. There’s nothing to do here but make your own entertainment.” Fucking small towns. Eddie never really blamed Richie for wanting to get out of town as fast as he could, had even felt a little relieved, under the sheer weight of his grief at losing the best friends he would ever have, that he himself would not be staying long in town after his mother announced their Big Move.

And now here he is again, stuck in town and talking to his boyfriend through the storm drains. There’s some sort of irony in there, but Eddie doesn’t really want to look closer to find it.

“I think it’s pretty cool,” says Richie.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “You watch too many crime shows,” he says. “There’s nothing cool about it. You’d get shot at or stabbed or—”

“Yeah, I know, I know, crime doesn’t pay,” says Richie. “I just—they think you’re a badass.”

“Well,” says Eddie, with a helpless shrug. “We both know I’m not _that_ much of a badass.” He’s had his badass moments, certainly, and these days he’s trying to be braver, but—shit, he’s a risk analyst who used to work for Wall Street and now works in a library in a rural Maine town. Nothing about that is in any way _cool_, at least not enough to earn teen cred.

“You are,” says Richie. “I seem to recall you throwing a fencepost at the clown like an Olympic athlete chucking a javelin at a target.”

Eddie blinks at him. “Weren’t you in the Deadlights?” he asks.

“Yeah, but It fucking hates you for that,” says Richie, and he sounds downright gleeful about it. “You _hurt_ it. It was supposed to be winning but you turned the goddamn tide with that throw. How does that not make you the coolest person I’ve ever known, huh?”

“I can’t be cool _and_ a dorky square, Rich,” says Eddie, unable to stop himself from smiling down at the storm drain. “That’s an oxymoron. That shit’s not possible.”

“And yet here you are,” says Richie, “somehow both. Eighth Wonder of the World right there.”

“Flatterer.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

Eddie can’t hear a lie in Richie’s voice, there. Not even a hint of sarcasm. _You really believe that,_ he thinks, just the smallest bit stunned by this devotion, this calm and simple statement held as fact. Eddie knows himself to be a lot of things, can even say he’s a handsome man (if also a neurotic asshole), but he’d never go so far as to describe himself in such glowing terms. Has he ever had a girlfriend who did? Myra never saw him the way Richie seems to see him, he knows that much. Neither did his mother, who could never really not see her sickly little boy even as Eddie grew up. But here’s Richie, calling him both a nerdy square and the Eighth Wonder, not trying to butter him up or manipulate him—just saying it because he believes it’s true, because it’s another way to say _I love you_.

_I love you too,_ Eddie wants to say right back. “You chucked a rock at It,” he says instead. “Maybe you got your ass Deadlighted for it, but honestly that was pretty fucking badass too, especially for a trashmouthed dipshit like you.”

“You’re so mean,” says Richie, but there’s a familiar fondness to his voice. “Is that a short people thing? The shorter you are, the meaner?”

“Yeah, when you’re short, _which I am not_, you’re closer to hell,” says Eddie. He grins when Richie chortles from the sewers, his familiar laugh echoing in the darkness and out into the light. “Hey,” he says, softly. “This won’t be forever.”

“I know,” says Richie, as certain as the sunrise.

“But if you ever need to talk about—anything,” Eddie continues, “I’m right here. And here I’m gonna stay as long as you’re stuck here.”

“You know you don’t have to, right?” Richie asks. “Like, fuck yeah, I like having someone who’ll feed me non-people food on the regular, but—you don’t have to stay in Derry. You could be in Bangor, come in every other day or so.”

“Where’s that coming from?” Eddie says. “I chose to come here and I’m choosing to stay. Safe or not.” He reaches into the storm drain and clasps Richie’s hand, sees the white drain out of Richie’s skin. “Plus, Bangor doesn’t have you,” he says.

“Now who’s the flatterer,” says Richie, but he sounds all choked up. His fingers slip out of Eddie’s hand, far too soon for Eddie’s tastes, and he says, “I gotta—I gotta go. Clown chaperone in the back of my skull still wants to eat you.” He pauses, then says, softly, “Anything, right?”

“Yes.”

“Only a little bit of judgment?”

“I’ll try to keep it all in reserve,” Eddie says.

Richie says nothing for a long moment. Then he says, “Maybe tonight. See you then, Eds.”

“Don’t,” says Eddie, fondly, “call me Eds. See you tonight.”

\--

Two to three overly long meetings later, Eddie all but collapses into his office chair. Jesus fucking Christ, he’d never known that libraries needed to spend so much. Oh, yeah, sure, he’d known public libraries could be pretty underfunded, but there is _so much_ that needs to be kept track of. God. He’ll never complain about overdue fees again now that he’s been on this side of it, now that he’s had to stretch out a budget of about ten dollars and a shoestring to cover the costs of repairs, employee salaries, books, computer upkeep, and all those other things that could trip a library up, if their financial department’s not careful.

And Eddie is _very_ careful with the Derry Library’s finances. Sure, he’s only really here until they can pull Richie out of the sewers, but a temporary job doesn’t mean he can slack off on it. Just means he has a shorter timeframe to do a good job in, and to prep things for whoever his successor will be. God, he hopes that whoever they are, they’ve got a knack for staying cool in the face of stress and incompetence. He has no idea how Mike managed, how Cathy manages.

His phone lights up with notifications from the group chat: just Bev and Ben and Stan, letting everyone else know they’ve arrived safely home. Bev and Ben haven’t said a word about where they live now, too conscious of what could happen in this day and age. None of the Losers would say a word, but hey, plausible deniability—if Beverly’s sleazeball ex tries to go after any of them, they can just tell the truth: that they don’t know anything, that they don’t know where she’s gone, and like fuck would they say.

Eddie puts his phone down with a sigh, then reaches over to fuss with the roses in the water bottle he’s using as a vase. Less than romantic, yeah, but it’s the thought that counts. It’s strange, though—none of them have wilted yet. They’re all still as fresh and vibrantly red as the day he got them. As sewer clown magic goes, this is probably the most romantic way of using it.

Then he opens his laptop and reviews the report of yesterday’s finances. Not too bad, a couple people returned their overdue books before the fees could hit $50, but the repair company’s bill just came in. It’s a _lot_ of money, where the hell are they going to scrounge up that much cash? Should he propose they all pool their money together to pay the company? Should he yell at the company more, cow them into lowering the price to something that won’t make the library bleed?

Another ping: Audra, using Bill’s phone, has just sent them a video. Eddie opens his phone to take a look, and snorts out a laugh at Bill and Mike caught mid-conversation, so engrossed in discussing Bill’s idea for a new book that they don’t notice Audra’s hand very discreetly tugging a plate of pasta towards herself.

_the writer life,_ Audra’s captioned the video. Already the reviews are flooding in, and so far Bill and Mike have not weighed in just yet. Too caught up, Eddie figures, in Bill’s new novel to notice their phones going off, just as they didn’t notice Audra stealing their pasta.

Eddie fires off a pithy line about endings, closes the app, then jams his phone back into his pocket and goes back to work. It’s weird, this is still stressful work, but it’s not as suffocating as being a risk analyst had been, after Derry. Maybe even before, for all the benefits he got in the job. The corporate world all but required you to be mean and razor-sharp, and after Derry, Eddie couldn’t quite keep it up. Grief had blunted his edge, and he couldn’t even bring himself to care.

There’s no such requirement here, in the Derry library. Eddie still feels a little—off, here, like he doesn’t fit here, but then he supposes that’s just because he knows this is temporary. You have to be truly passionate about this job, he thinks, about this place, about _Derry_ to want to stay here. Eddie doesn’t want to stay here, and as soon as he gets Richie back, they’re leaving Derry and the bad memories haunting the town in the dust and never looking back.

But he could work at a place like this. Something nonprofit, maybe. Something that helps people. He’s not quite sure yet, what he wants out of his career path now. If he even wants to stay on this career path. He could always head back to school, get a different degree, do—something else. The possibilities are head-spinningly endless. Or at least they will be after he’s done here. After they get Richie out, alive and safe and clean of any trace of murderous clown ghost.

And they will. They _will_, he believes that with all his heart. Has to. Believing something in this town makes it so, he’s seen that in action. If there’s any doubt in his heart, it won’t work.

Someone knocks on the door, and Eddie jerks his head up from the spreadsheet. “Oh,” he says, “hey, Cathy.”

“Hey to you too, Eddie,” says Cathy, crossing the room to stand at his desk. “You seemed kinda tired at that last meeting, the one about the book donation drive. You didn’t even raise your voice when you told Brandt his poster looked like shit.”

“I didn’t say that,” says Eddie.

“I’m paraphrasing,” says Cathy, sitting down. “You all right?”

_I’m gay and my boyfriend is an undead sewer monster, and I’m absolutely terrified of losing him somehow, but otherwise I’m just peachy, Cathy. Just fucking peachy._ “Yeah, you know,” says Eddie, “just a bit tired from last night. I did a lot of research.” He pauses, then says, somewhat warily, “What are you here for? Really?”

“I can’t check up on you?” Cathy asks.

“I guess you could,” Eddie allows, “but in my experience bosses don’t check up on you because they’re worried about you.”

Cathy nods, and says, “You’re partly right. I am checking up on you, because you’re my employee and I get worried about you.”

Eddie’s skin prickles at that. _Eddie-bear, I just worry about you so much._ He’s fine, he’s alive, people have got to stop worrying about him so much when there’s bigger shit to deal with. “I’m just fine,” he says, a little more curt than he means to be. “Any other reason?”

“You’re close to Mike,” says Cathy. “You guys were, _are_ best friends, I remember that from when I was a kid.” She crosses her arms, fingers tapping at her elbows, and says, “Could I call him? Where is he right now, anyway?”

“Scotland,” says Eddie.

“He’s in _what_,” says Cathy.

“He always did want to travel,” says Eddie. “Why do you need to call him, anyway?”

Cathy’s breath hisses out between her teeth, before she pushes her hand through her hair and sits down. Her professional mask drops, just then, her stern, hard expression turning into something a tad—he hesitates to use the word _softer_, here, because she doesn’t really soften. It’s more like she’s shown him the other sharp, ugly parts that she can’t quite handle, under the ones she can. Like she’s been hiding exactly how stressed she is.

God, she grew up, didn’t she. Grew harder and sharper, because what else can you do in a town like this but turn hard and sharp to survive? Or carve out every part of yourself that’s strange, that stands out, because anything that stands out in the crowd of Derry marks you as prey, and god help the ones who couldn’t. Or get out as soon as you could.

“This is such a fucking mess he left me with,” she says, pressing her fingers to her temples and shaking her head. To Eddie’s shock, her eyes actually seem a little wet. “I know, I _know_—he did what he could to ease the transition, and I can’t blame him for wanting to get out of town. He’s always wanted to get out of town, I saw him once making some travel itinerary, but god_dammit_, with all the shit that Bowers pulled and now this, I could’ve used his help. I could’ve used some more damn guidance.”

“Wait, didn’t he show you the ropes?” Eddie asks, a little overwhelmed.

“He did, is the thing,” says Cathy. “He trusted me to handle it by myself.” She barks out a mirthless laugh, and says, “I don’t know how he managed to do it by himself all that time, with all the shit he had to deal with just for being black. I’m a white woman and sometimes I swear it’s like the board thinks I’m a spiteful practical joke Mike’s playing on them, and that he’s coming back sometime soon.”

“I know he’s going to visit soon,” says Eddie, “but like—you’re not wrong. You are _so_ not wrong at all.”

“You know what the worst thing is?” Cathy says.

“What?”

“I wish he _would_.” She laughs again, and it’s somehow even more humorless than before, stress putting a strain on her laugh. Poor fucking kid. “At least to tell me what I’m doing wrong. Digitizing our content’s the thing I wanted to do, I know that, but with the wreckage Bowers left behind, and the costs of repairing that wreckage, and the board postponing reading _anything_ that’s longer than one page with ten sentences—I can’t even think about the big picture anymore, there’s so many smaller details tripping me up.”

“That sounds so fucking familiar it’s almost depressing,” says Eddie, leaning over the table to pat awkwardly at her wrist. What, his only real experience with crying women is Beverly and his ex-wife, and the former has Ben and the less said about Eddie’s reactions to Myra’s crying the better. And he’s certainly never had to comfort his boss before. “I’m—uh. I’m sorry. I could call him right now, but I think our time zones are very different. He could be about to go to sleep right now.”

“Mike Hanlon, sleep early?” Cathy snorts out a laugh, and shakes her head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him nap here, y’know? Something was always driving him forward.”

She does have a point, he has to admit that much. Eddie had seen the dark smudges under Mike’s eyes at the Jade, that first time all seven of them had met back up with each other. He’s read Mike’s notebooks, the twenty-seven years’ worth of research, and through them felt the heavy burden of being the only one left in Derry, the lighthouse keeper, pressing down on him, heavier and heavier with every word. _I jump when the iron stairs leading up to the stacks creak. I jump at shadows. I find myself wondering how I’d react if I was shelving books up there in the stacks, pushing my little rubber-wheeled trolley in front of me, and a hand reached from between two leaning rows of books, a groping hand…_

Eddie still jumps at shadows, jumps when the stairs creak. Sometimes he half-expects to see the leper, lumbering after him, its skeletal, nearly-mummified arms reaching for him. He’d say he can’t imagine having to live with that fear for twenty-seven years, but—well, he did, didn’t he, even if he forgot. He had been so scared, all that time, of diseases and pain and viruses and bacteria and taking a step out of the safe little cage his mother built for him. Now he’s still scared, but it’s a different kind of fear. He’s not quite as scared for himself anymore, but for Richie, trapped in the sewers with only the clown for company, and the other Losers.

Okay, granted, he’s still a bit scared of a ton of other shit, just not so much the clown anymore, beyond the instinct to look over his shoulder and check the corners for some fucked-up jump scare. He wonders if Mike feels the same way—yeah, Pennywise is pretty much dead and on its last legs, but Mike’s been looking over his shoulder for twenty-seven years. Habits ingrained that deep are hard to yank out.

“So,” says Eddie, “is that a _yes, call him_?”

“I’m bitching,” says Cathy, “I can handle this. I should be able to handle this. I shouldn’t even be talking to you about this.”

“Kinda sounds like you need to talk to him, though,” Eddie points out, “because I’m—I am so not equipped for this, and he is, and I’m just—a guy you knew back in the day.” He opens his phone and pulls up Mike’s contact info, then slides it across the table towards her and says, “Call him. If he’s asleep, let him be, but if he’s awake, I promise he’ll try his best to help you. I wouldn’t be here, if he didn’t help me.”

True enough, if you squint at it from a different viewpoint. Mike calling all of them back had kicked this all off in the first place, and the call had helped Eddie remember how brave he had been at thirteen, with his friends at his back. And Mike had helped Eddie get a job here at the library, thank fucking god for nepotism.

It’s good enough for Cathy, who reaches a hand up and rubs her knuckles against her eyes. “It couldn’t hurt,” she concedes.

“Great,” says Eddie. “I need to go take a break, anyway.” He pulls out his phone charger from his bag, and says, “Plug this in when you dip below thirty percent, and I have a bottle of hand sanitizer in the second drawer from the top here that you should absolutely use before and after, but go as long as you need. I have—something I need to do.”

\--

There are payphones outside the library, and thankfully, Bowers hadn’t targeted those during his rampage, so hey, thank god for small favors, Eddie supposes. He slides in a few quarters, dials Sean’s number in, and waits as the phone rings.

“Hello?” Sean says, his Scottish brogue coming through loud and clear. “Who is this?”

“This is Eddie. From the Falcon?” Eddie leans against the wall for a moment, unthinkingly, before he remembers all the things you can get from the wall of a public library and straightens back up so his back isn’t touching it. He looks down at the book he checked out: a collection of fairy tales, sorted by country of origin. There’s a lot of them under Scotland and Ireland, and Tam Lin, sure enough, is under the Scotland category. “Eddie Kaspbrak.”

“Oh, yeah!” says Sean, snapping his fingers. “Yeah, the first-timer who was waiting on the rain to let up. What’s up?”

“I’ve been doing some research on the side into stories like Tam Lin,” says Eddie. “Trying to see if there’s anything here in Derry that might fit the same trend, like what you saw in the Barrens. There were some Irish and Scottish settlers here, weren’t there?”

“Well, mostly Irish,” says Sean. In the background, Eddie can hear the sound of another man saying something Eddie can’t quite make out. Sean laughs, says, “_Mo leannan,_ I promise, the only man I would ever leave you for without so much as a note is Chris Hemsworth. This is just a fellow I’m helping with his troubles in a platonic way, that’s all.” To Eddie, he says, “Sorry, boyfriend wanted to know if I was making plans to run away with someone.”

“No offense,” says Eddie, “but you’re not my type.”

“I figured from the first word,” says Sean. “You thought I was someone else.” He hums. “This shite can be hard to talk about over the phone,” he says, “and my boyfriend will make concerned noises at me if I talk about you-know-what. Do you want to meet up?”

“I’m at the library right now,” says Eddie. “You can come meet up with me here.”

“What a romantic destination,” says Sean, and Eddie hears the sound of Sean and his boyfriend playfully fighting over the phone, delighted laughter ringing in his ear. So this is what love can sound like—laughter and teasing, and the security of knowing that no matter what, this is your _home_.

And Eddie, well, Eddie had always thought that home was, when you went there, they had to chain you down, clap irons on you to keep you safe and keep you _there_. Then he’d thought, on his way to Derry, that it was the place where you went to face the thing in the dark, the monster under the bed you’d forgotten about when you grew up. But it’s not, isn’t it? Home is where you go to rest your weary bones, where you look forward to going even after a good day, because someone you love with all your heart is there to listen to you talk about your day no matter how boring it was, and to talk about their day, which you think is infinitely more exciting no matter what they do. Someone is there to save a plate and their dirtiest jokes for you. Someone is there to hold you close to their heart at night, to hold your heart in their hands because you trust them, you love them, you know them down to their bones and they know you the same way. Home is where love is supposed to live.

Twenty-seven years, and he’d forgotten where he’d built his home. He knows that’s because of the fucking clown, but—well, still. You’re not supposed to just forget something like that, something that defined so much of your best memories. To lose a home that you built with the people you love is to lose a vital piece of yourself along with it, but then, that had been the goal, hadn’t it. It had wanted them torn asunder, to make them easier to kill.

“I’ll meet you on the front steps,” says Eddie.

“See you there, then,” says Sean, and he hangs up.

Eddie climbs up the stairs after that, and sits down to wait for Sean. He opens the book and flips idly through the pages, eyes catching snatches of names and places and words, black ink on yellowed paper. There are a lot of Margarets in folklore, apparently.

He wonders, suddenly, how many of these tales sprung up from living near a creature like It. There’s one about a cruel mother who drowned her children in a river and later saw them playing by the shore—if It is any indication, the woman might’ve been hallucinating the whole goddamn time, fooled by the malevolent force living near her home both in murdering her children and seeing them again. Here’s another, about a man who’s drowned six women in a lake, only to die when the seventh fools him—lucky seven, huh? He wonders if it really was a man that drowned those women, or if it was something else entirely.

And here, the ballad of Tam Lin—

“Hey,” says Sean, and Eddie nearly jumps out of his skin in shock, slamming the book shut.

“Shit!” says Eddie. “Fuck, man, warn a guy!”

“Sorry!” says Sean, stepping back and holding his hands up, as if to calm Eddie down. “Really quite sorry about that. What’re you reading?”

“Book about fairy tales,” says Eddie, showing him the aged cover. He doesn’t know exactly how long this book has been here in the library, but a quick peek at the library card gives the earliest date as, Jesus, _1989_. This thing has been here for twenty-seven years. Eddie half-thinks it’s been waiting for one of them to pick it up this whole time, but that’s just—a ridiculous notion, really. Books don’t lie in wait to be picked up. “Some of them piqued my interest, reminded me of what you were talking about when we first met.”

“The man in the Barrens,” says Sean. “Mister Great Big Bloody Chest Hole.”

Eddie suppresses a snicker behind his hand. In the back of his mind, he can almost hear Richie snorting out a laugh. _The kid gets off a good one! Will ya look at that!_ he would say, and god, does Eddie miss him, all of a sudden.

“Wasn’t funny at the time,” says Sean, “but I’m glad one of us thinks it was.”

“Sorry,” says Eddie, contrite. He’s seen Richie’s chest hole. It’s big, and it’s bloody, and how Richie can walk around in the fucking _sewers_ with that gaping hole right through him without worrying about possibly getting infected, Eddie will never know. Then again, maybe Richie wasn’t wrong, when he said it was the least of his worries. “Just—reminded me of someone, that’s all.”

Sean gives an understanding hum, his eyes slanting sideways towards Eddie. _The mysterious Richie,_ he doesn’t say, but Eddie can tell he’s thinking it. “You think he might’ve been, what, part of the fae or something?” Sean asks. “You think he stepped right out of a fairy tale?”

“I think he stepped right out of a horror movie,” says Eddie. “The R-rated shit where people die horribly if they’re not smart enough. And I’m trying to be smart enough to survive.” And brave enough to save Richie, too. “Hypothetically,” he adds.

Sean tilts his head and says, “What _are_ you doing here, Eddie Kaspbrak? Hypothetically, if you weren’t writing a book on Derry?”

_I’m rescuing my boyfriend from the evil ancient clown ghost who’s possessed him._ Even in Eddie’s head that sounds ridiculous, and Sean might have a higher tolerance for weirdness than others, but everyone has their limits. So instead Eddie just shrugs and says, “Surviving a horror novel set in Derry, but with fairies. Thanks for the inspiration, by the way.”

“Between the two of us, you might have a slightly better advantage than I do,” Sean says. “Derry is wildly racist. And homophobic.” He tips his hat, then. “And you’re very welcome,” he adds.

“I kinda noticed the homophobia, yeah,” says Eddie.

Sean winces, in sympathy. “I hope those punks didn’t get on your arse too much,” he says. “You don’t look beaten up, so congrats on making it out unscathed.”

“Eh, I had help,” says Eddie, electing not to mention the nature of that help. Suffice it to say, he’s pretty sure no one’s going to want to mess with him for a while, not if they want to keep having a good night’s sleep. “No, they didn’t. You?”

“My mother insisted I take some self-defense classes when I was younger, so I can take a few licks and keep going,” says Sean. “It’s come in very handy many times.” He leans back, palms resting on one of the steps behind him, and Eddie inches away somewhat. “Relax, I’m not going to kick your teeth in,” says Sean.

“Oh, no,” says Eddie, “that’s not what I’m worried about. You know how much birdshit gets dropped onto these stairs? And mud and dirt and shit people track onto them all the _time_—”

“Okay, okay, bloody Christ, man,” says Sean, pulling his hands away and wiping them down on his jeans. Eddie winces, because that doesn’t really _help_, but he’d left his hand sanitizer back in his desk, so it’s not like he can help. “Don’t need to ride my arse so hard over it, that’s my man Jonny’s job.”

“Christ,” says Eddie, “God fucking save me, it’s like trying to get Richie to—” And he stops, the old grief welling back up in his chest at the same time the memory bubbles back up.

Richie had done something like that, back in the day. They used to wait for Ben on the stairs, whenever he went to the library—just because Bowers was in jail, with all his goons dead, it didn’t mean Ben was now safe from assholes who wanted to pick on him for being fat. The worst of them was gone, sure, but there were still dickheads who would jeer at Ben, so the Losers had decided to start going with him to the library more often. Mike went with Ben the most often, that was how the library bug had bitten him, and of course Bill liked reading the horror books, but Richie and Eddie just liked to hang out on the stairs and wait for Ben to come back out, eating ice cream in the meantime.

Oh, Eddie remembers: Richie used to lean back, palms flat against the grey, worn marble of the library steps, until Eddie came back with ice cream. When the ice cream melted, dripping down the cone and onto Richie’s fingers, he seemed to think nothing of simply licking it off, and it drove Eddie fucking nuts to see it. Of course he said as much, _fucking hell, Richie, stop touching the stairs_, and Richie would get that glint in his eye that said he was going to do it _more_, simply because Eddie was telling him not to do it, and looking back Eddie can’t believe he didn’t see the trend, somehow. Richie had wanted him to look at him, wanted him to pay attention, and went about it in pretty much the same way any young boy with a ridiculously-sized crush would. It should’ve been obvious then.

He puts the book aside, pulls a knee up to his chest and rubs his thumb over his eye, trying to brush away a tear. Jesus Christ, Kaspbrak. Stop fucking crying, in front of this nice young man who—

—who’s patting his back, gently, his eyes full of concern. “Your friend Richie,” Sean starts.

“He’s—not _okay_,” Eddie says, hastily rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand, because dammit, this kid shouldn’t have to comfort him, they don’t even _know_ each other. “But I have a plan. The start of one. I’m gonna get him the fuck out of here.”

“Huh,” says Sean. “Okay. Do—Do you need any help?” He fishes his phone out, one-handed, from his pocket, and says, “I have a friend who’s a lawyer, if your Richie needs any legal help getting out of whatever situation he’s in, I can give him a call. He’s licensed to practice in three states, smart little bastard, and Maine’s one of them.”

Eddie holds back a hysterical laugh. What the fuck is a lawyer going to do up against a monster like It? Talk it to death, probably. Or be eaten, more likely. And that’s without Richie in the picture. “No,” he says, “it’s not—it’s dangerous for more people to get involved. And we’re already working on it.” He pauses, fiddling with his sleeves, then says, “But just in case, is he licensed for California?”

“Yeah, he’s based out of LA,” says Sean.

Oh, that’s convenient. “Can I have his number?” Eddie asks.

So Sean passes him his phone and directs him to Nick Wright’s name in the contact list, and Eddie, squashing down the voice in his head that’s howling about how easy it would be to pick something up off a simple phone, copies down the phone number on a napkin from his pocket. When he’s done, he folds it back up and sticks it back into his pocket, and hands Sean’s phone back to him. “Thanks,” he says. “Got another favor I need to ask you, actually.”

“You’re welcome,” says Sean. “Shoot. I’ve not got much to do today anyway.”

“The Sìth,” says Eddie. “All this—fairy shit. You know a lot about it, yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Sean. “Spent a lot of time in Scotland after my parents divorced. I’ve heard a _lot_ of fairy stories—I even know a couple blokes who’ve had their own encounters with the Fair Folk, reputable and sensible folks.”

“Do you believe in them?” Eddie asks.

“Well, yeah,” says Sean. His hand rises up to seesaw back and forth, as he quotes: “There are more things in heaven and on this Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, blah blah, fact is stranger than fiction—y’know what I mean.” His hand falls again. “Sometimes there’s no other explanation that makes any bloody sense.”

Belief, in Derry, can do a whole lot of damage. Eddie’s hand drifts up to the arcade token, resting underneath his clothes and against his skin, warmed by body heat. _If you believe it does._ “How can you ward them off?” he asks. “How can you fight them? How do you know you’re dealing with them? What do you—”

“Slow down, man,” says Sean, holding his hands up. “One question at a time. You’re very enthusiastic about this book, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” says Eddie, forcing a smile and hoping it doesn’t look too crazy. Judging from Sean’s wince, he’s failed miserably. “It’s—you know, saved from writer’s block, something like that.”

“Uh-huh,” says Sean. Thank god the kid’s letting him have this excuse, Eddie doesn’t know how he can even begin to explain It and Richie and how it’s all tangled together. He doesn’t even know if what Sean has to offer is any good against It, but—if he believes in it, believes strongly enough to tangibly affect the shape It had tried to assume to scare him, that’s good enough for Eddie. “Okay. First question: shoot.”

“How do you know you’re dealing with the Sìth?” Eddie asks.

“They are exceedingly beautiful and they’re very particular about their words,” says Sean. “They put a lot of stock into their words, because for them language has a magic all its own. They can catch you out if you’re careless with your tongue.” His fingers tap against his knee, bared by the hole in his jeans. God, kids these days, going around wearing jeans that come with holes in them. God, Eddie is _old_, if he thinks of Sean as a kid, but fuck if this cocksure twentysomething who believes in fucking fairies doesn’t make Eddie think of how goddamn _young_ he is. Adrian Mellon had been young too. “Uh—they’re pretty small, generally, but I’ve heard they can be our size or bloody fucking gigantic, it really varies between myths. But they’re very good at illusions, they can make themselves appear to be someone else.”

“Or something you’re scared of?” Eddie says.

“I—suppose so, theoretically,” says Sean. “But that’s not usually their MO. They like to _lure_ people in, and then abduct them for their own purposes.” He shrugs. “God knows what purposes. Maybe as servants, maybe as knights. Again, it all varies from myth to myth. There’s this thing they do, by the way, where they abduct a child and then replace them with a fairy child called a changeling—”

“That’s a whole lot of trouble to go to for one kid,” says Eddie, thinking of missing posters, of a thing that looked like Georgie looking up to Bill and crying about wanting to go home. Twist the story around, set it in a time long, long ago, and he can see where the stories branched out, where simple human embellishments entered the story.

“They tend to cause a fair bit of trouble for us mortal beings, yeah,” says Sean. “My mother used to tell me never to play near fairy rings, ‘cause I’d catch their attention.”

“Fairy what, now?”

“Fairy rings.” Sean sketches a circle in the air, and says, “Just a ring of mushrooms. She also told me to always keep some iron and dry bread on me, to ward them off. So that’s your question about protection answered.”

No mushroom rings, and carry lots of iron and dry bread. Yeah, Eddie can do the first easily enough, he still has a healthy distrust of fungi in the wild. He can also carry bread in his pocket, but iron—what, should he take the fireplace poker into the Barrens or something? “What else?” he asks.

“Leave their spaces alone, duh,” says Sean. “Haven’t gone near the Barrens since I ran into great big bloody chest hole man. You’re—You’re not planning to go to the Barrens, are you?”

“Nope,” says Eddie, lying through his teeth.

“Please don’t,” says Sean. “You’re weird, but you’re decent, which is a lot more than I can say for—pretty much half this town.” He winces. “I know it’s getting better, but it’s too slow for me.”

Winter is coming, thinks Eddie. The autumn is slipping through his fingers, like snowmelt dripping through the gaps between them. And as the autumn days slip away from him, so does the time he has left with Richie. The town is getting better, in increments, but it’s not doing it fast enough. Its ghost still haunts Derry, and its hold could tighten at any time. “You should probably get out of town sometime soon,” he says, now. “If it’s too slow.”

“Fuck no,” says Sean. “All the people I love are here. You wouldn’t leave your Richie, yeah?”

_Your Richie_, he says, and Eddie shivers at the sound of it. Richie’s not his, no matter how many kisses they trade, no matter how much Eddie loves and wants him, no matter if Eddie’s here for him. But goddamn, he _wants_ that, just as he knows he wants Richie to point at him and say _he’s mine_, and isn’t that an awful way to think of the man that he loves—someone to be possessed. Richie’s possessed enough already, fucking thanks, demon clown.

It doesn’t change the fact that at the phrase, something sings in the pit of Eddie’s stomach, deep in his heart. He can hear the clarion call ringing in his ears, _yes, mine, his, yes._ The worst part of it is how much he wants it, how hungry he is for it. And he’s so fucking starved, but Jesus _Christ_, he doesn’t want to carve Richie up like a roast ham and eat him up.

“I wouldn’t leave him,” he says, and that much is true. He’d made Richie promise not to leave him, so it goes both ways.

“You get it,” says Sean, oblivious. “What else, what else about the Sìth—I dunno if this will help, but they go in for the number three a lot. My mother used to tell me, if you asked a fairy a question three times, ‘twould have to give you an answer. If you do something three times with them you’re guaranteed to get something back, but it’s not always gonna be pretty.”

Three tokens, three Losers in the Deadlights, seven Losers. All this numerology’s gonna make Eddie’s head spin. And—weren’t there three Deadlights? Eddie hadn’t looked at them when they’d descended from the ceiling of the cavern during the ritual, but Bev had said she’d seen three spinning lights, before the Deadlights plunged her into catatonia.

“Could they possess people?” Eddie asks.

“Uh,” says Sean. “Well. Not really, not in the sense where you could be possessed by a demon or a ghost like in a horror movie, but—they could charm you. They could cast an illusion to make you _think_ you saw something you didn’t.” He scratches at his chin, and says, “They can and often _do_ steal people away, though. Kids are a favorite, especially wee little bairns that can’t even defend themselves, but people like Tam Lin got picked up too. And once you fall under the Sìth’s domain, they can do pretty much anything they want to you. Even change your shape.”

Eddie’s breath seizes there in his throat, growing claws to dig into the soft flesh. All he can think of is how It had managed, just for a moment, to push Richie aside enough to change him. All he can think of is the steady drip of dirty water from Richie’s hand, and a memorial hanging in the Falcon.

“Any way to get out?” he asks.

“Not without help,” says Sean.

“So what’s the help supposed to do?”

“Have faith,” says Sean. “And build up your arm strength, too, while you’re at it.”


	14. keep your brittle heart warm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Taylor Swift's "peace" bc I haven't stopped streaming folklore and my sister despises me for it. whoops.
> 
> **content warnings:** discussion of parental deaths. hints of Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ parenting and its effects on Eddie's adult life. Pennywise makes a small cameo appearance this chapter. Richie is certain that he is going to die and some of the things he says and does may be interpreted as suicidal. Richie's past attempts at "fixing" his homosexuality is mentioned in passing. spoilers for _Trading Places_.

Eddie stays a little later at the library than usual. He kinda has to, they’ve got one last meeting with the board and he has to present a fundraiser proposal to them and _not_ leap over the table to strangle them for being reluctant to approve it. Which he does an admirable job at, frankly, and he should really get some kind of award for it.

He drives back to the townhouse as the night begins to fall, as the darkness steals over the town, not quite willing to risk walking in Derry at night. Because he’s a conscientious driver who doesn’t want to cause an accident, Eddie turns his headlights on and drives under the speed limit, even though he wants very badly to just get back to the townhouse already so he can reheat dinner and just fucking _sleep_—

“Hey, you’re passing by McDonald’s, right?”

Eddie does not drive right into a pole, but he _does_ slam his foot down on the brakes, hard enough that the car jolts. The seatbelt keeps him from knocking his head on the steering wheel, thankfully, and he yanks the hand brake up before he twists around to see Richie, rubbing at his forehead, bleeding sluggishly into the backseat.

“What the _fuck_,” says Eddie, heatedly. “You know I was driving, right? You know I’m not supposed to get distracted _while driving_?”

“Well, _sorry_,” says Richie, huffy. “But you were driving so slow I figured I could risk it.”

Eddie stares at him. “I was _still driving_,” he says. “What the hell were you _thinking_? Do you know how many road accidents per year happen because the driver got _distracted_? Jesus fucking Christ, Rich, you should know better!”

“I didn’t think it’d be a risk!” Richie says. “I mean, I figured, maybe...maybe…” He stops, then frowns, like he can’t quite find the right words. Or like he’s realized something.

“Maybe _what_,” Eddie says, his voice just an inch away from an actual snarl.

Richie slumps back against his seat, rubs the heel of his palm against his forehead, and says, hollowly, “I don’t think I’m the one who figured it.”

“What?” Eddie says, but he doesn’t really need the question answered. There’s no one else Richie could be talking about but Pennywise, who’s squatting in the back of Richie’s brain, and while it’s not the first time Eddie has considered or even seen firsthand the problems that could come with his boyfriend and best friend being possessed by the ghost of an evil child-eating sewer clown, it _is_ kind of terrifying to realize that the clown was trying to kill him. Because It was. And It was trying to kill him through Richie.

His stomach twists into an ugly Gordian knot.

“Richie,” Eddie says, “how do you know it wasn’t you?”

“The thing is,” says Richie, rattled, “up until you asked me what the hell I was thinking? I thought it _was_ me.” Then he lets out a breath. “Then you asked, and trying to talk that thought process through—I hit on something off.” Clown levels of off, he doesn’t say, but they both can hear it anyway. “Gives a whole new meaning to the sentence _the devil made me do it,_ huh?” Richie says, his voice brittle under the forced wry tone.

Eddie undoes his seatbelt, twists around till he’s facing Richie. He can see now that Richie’s pulled his legs up to his chest, hands flexing and relaxing on his dirty jeans. Like this, he just looks like a scared kid, and for a moment that’s what Eddie sees: a scared boy of thirteen, sitting in his backseat, terrified of what’s happening to him. Then he blinks, and it’s Richie as he is right now, blue eyes flecked with that sickly golden color, skin as ashen-pale as a corpse’s. Because he is one, technically speaking.

“But it didn’t,” says Eddie. “See? I’m still alive.” He reaches for Richie’s hand, but Richie flinches away, and Eddie has to drop his hand. “Rich, what’s going on?”

“Oh, nothing, just found out that apparently I can’t even _trust me_ anymore,” says Richie, and now his voice is cracking with panic. “Since there’s a fucking monster clown that’s been _fucking with my head_.”

Oh. “Richie,” says Eddie, softly. “You managed to unfuck it this time. You’re okay.”

“Yeah, _this time_,” says Richie. “We got lucky. _You_ got lucky.” He runs a hand through his hair, then inches toward one of the back doors. “Never mind about the McDonald’s,” he says, “just—just get back to the townhouse safe. I’ll be fine.”

“You _just_ told me that It’s fucking with your head,” says Eddie, “maybe, you know, I’m just spitballing here, but maybe you should stay with someone you know you can trust instead of all by yourself.”

Richie stares at him for a moment, then his gaze flicks down to Eddie’s hand, resting on the center console. “You know it’s dangerous, right?” Richie asks, but his voice wavers, eyes hopeful. “I can’t—I can’t guarantee I’ll stay the night. I can’t even promise I’ll stay longer than an hour or something.”

“Then just spend an hour with me,” says Eddie. “Forget about It, watch a movie on Netflix. You know they have all of _Friends_ on there, right?”

“I was on _Friends_,” says Richie. “I was one of Phoebe’s _many_ exes.”

“Oh, fuck, yeah, I saw that episode,” says Eddie, shuddering. “_How I Met Your Mother_, then?”

“No, that was what we in the industry call a _brag_, Eds,” says Richie. “You think I’m _ashamed_ I played a part in a nineties comedy icon? No, we’re watching my fucking episode and I’m gonna tell you all the behind-the-scenes gossip they wouldn’t even leak to the tabloids.”

“So you’re coming with me?” Eddie asks, feeling his heart grow light and giddy.

Richie shrugs, and his mouth turns upward in a small smile, not quite showing off his teeth. “If you don’t mind me dripping blood and sewer water on your carpet,” he says. “Just—if I have to go, don’t try to stop me, okay? This is pretty fucking risky already, but,” he shrugs, “I never could say no to you with those eyes. It’s like trying to kick fucking Bambi.”

“I’m not _Bambi_,” says Eddie, offended.

“With those eyes?” Richie snorts out a laugh. “Eds, I beg to differ. Eds-bi?”

“I’m gonna throw you out of this fucking car,” says Eddie.

\--

Eddie takes hold of Richie’s hand from the moment he steps out of the car and does not let go even when they’ve made it inside. Richie should maybe put up more of a protest about it, or even just pull his hand out of Eddie’s at some point, but it’s—nice. It feels nice. Even out in the street, the instinctive fear of being _seen_ had mostly been overwhelmed by the warmth of Eddie’s hand in his, the faint beat of Eddie’s pulse under his wrist.

And here Richie used to make fun of couples holding hands on the street, of the sheer amount of PDA edging into indecency, especially in the face of single, forty-year-old bachelors. Good fucking grief, he’s become the person he and his ghostwriters made money making fun of, only gayer and also more possessed by murder clown. Just a brush of Eddie’s hand against his and Richie feels all faint and ready to swoon, like some kinda Victorian maiden in a romance novel.

The townhouse is mostly the same as it was when Richie checked in that first time. Although—

“Well, I like the new rug in the lobby,” he says, after Eddie deposits him at the kitchen table and pulls the fridge open, looking for fresh meat. “Very stylish. Very, uh, blue and fuzzy.”

“It’s a castoff my ex-father-in-law sent me last week,” Eddie grumbles, and Richie immediately winces. “It was dusty as fuck when I got it, so I had it cleaned and then replaced the shitty old rug. You want chicken, beef or pork?”

“Why would your ex’s dad still be sending you shit?” Richie asks. “Is he trying to bribe you into going back or something? And if you can fry up a burger steak, that’ll be swell.” Yeah, sure, technically he doesn’t need it cooked, but raw meat tastes gross and Eddie would likely flip his shit about salmonella.

“Probably,” says Eddie, and pulls out a vacuum-sealed package of frozen patties. “Or he’s trying to trigger my allergies and send me into anaphylactic shock or something.”

“You don’t _have_ any allergies,” Richie says, baffled. “Didn’t you tell your ex that?”

“I did, and yet,” says Eddie. “I don’t think she believed me, and I know she would’ve left that little detail out in telling her family what happened.”

Every little bit of detail Eddie deigns to tell Richie about Myra makes Richie want to drive to New York and give her a piece of his mind. It’s stupid, because Eddie’s already in the middle of divorcing her, and they haven’t talked to each other in a while without lawyers between them, but still. Richie fuckin’ hates her. It’s not rational and it’s probably not all that fair, because Eddie’s acknowledged that he pulled some dick moves during their marriage too, but—well. Richie’s a Hollywood man. He’s seen couples in his friend groups split up amicably, divide up their assets with the least amount of pain and fuss, and then afterwards still hang out like old friends. There’s literally no reason for Eddie’s divorce to be this much of a painful, embarrassing mess. Unless, of course, Myra’s trying to punish him in some way.

Isn’t that a familiar old tale?

**_he’s always going to come running right back to mommy,_** It whispers in the back of his mind.

Richie glares balefully at the cabinet. “Shut the fuck up,” he says, out loud.

“I didn’t say anything,” says Eddie, having shut the fridge door. Now he’s stuck the wrapped patties in a bowl full of cold water, and is setting a timer.

“Not you,” says Richie. “Clown.”

“Oh,” says Eddie. He puts the timer down on the kitchen counter and sits down in front of Richie, clasping his hands around Richie’s own. “I, uh, I read on the Internet that you could drown out anxiety by listening to music,” he says. “Yeah, being possessed by a fucking demon clown probably isn’t the same as, like, trying to drown out the shit in your head freaking out about g—about _whatever_, but. I can put on the radio?”

“_Please_,” says Richie. “I’ll listen to Kanye fucking West before I’ll listen to Pennywise the Dancing goddamn Clown.”

“Better flow,” says Eddie, seriously.

“No, he’s not,” says Richie, peevishly. “I met the guy. He’s a fucking _dick_.”

“He’s a rapper married to a Kardashian, did you expect anything else?” Eddie stands up, hands slipping out of Richie’s, and goes to fiddle with the old-looking boombox on the kitchen counter. After a moment, Justin Bieber’s tinny, shitty voice sings, _My mama don’t like you and she likes everyone—_

“Oh, fuck this guy,” says Eddie, venomously.

“What did the Biebs ever do to you, huh?” Richie asks, leaning on the table and grinning. “Did he kick your puppy or something?”

“He’s _overrated_,” says Eddie, switching stations with a ruthless precision. Bieber immediately gives way to Adele, singing, _Everybody loves the things you do, from the way you talk to the way you move…_

“You sap,” says Richie, fondly.

“Everyone likes Adele!” Eddie says, defensively, before turning around. “Okay, so we have some time to kill before I have to change the water and check if the patties are properly thawed, so—” He holds his hands out, and says, “Can I have this dance?”

Thirteen-year-old Richie Tozier, faced with the prospect of dancing with the boy he loved, would have fainted dead away. Forty-year-old and sorta-dead Richie Tozier feels his unbeating heart flutter in his chest.

“Well?” Eddie says, curling his fingers. His eyebrows are starting to crease together out of worry. His mouth opens, as if to call the whole thing off.

Richie gets to his feet, and, despite his better judgment, closes the distance between them. “You incurable fucking romantic,” he says, fondly, as Eddie puts one hand on his shoulder and the other hand on the small of his back. Behind them, as Richie settles his own hands on Eddie’s waist, Adele sings, _But if by chance, you’re here alone, can I have a moment before I go? ‘Cause I’ve been by myself all night long…_

“Hoping you’re someone,” Eddie sings softly, “I used to know…”

“You know the lyrics?” Richie asks.

“I mean, it played all the fucking time on the radio,” says Eddie. “I picked up on them.”

_You look like a movie, you sound like a song, my god, this reminds me of when we were young—_

“Pretty shitty movie,” Richie weakly jokes. “What with the super-gory special effects and all.”

“I could do without the special effects, yeah,” says Eddie, “but—I like this. I like you.” His hand creeps upward, to rest over the back of Richie’s neck, and Richie’s breath catches in his throat. “Remember the Sadie Hawkins dance?”

“I remember Jenny Saunders stepping on my shoes,” says Richie. “She couldn’t dance worth shit. Plus every time I tried looking for you in the crowd, you were always hanging out with your date Tiffany.”

“Yeah, she took pity on me and helped me sneak out of the house,” says Eddie. “But she wanted me to dance with her to her favorite songs, and uh. Turns out, everything that played was a favorite song.”

“She scammed you but _good_,” says Richie.

“She really did,” says Eddie, “because it was never Tiffany Myers I wanted to dance with, it was _you_.” He tugs Richie down a little, gently, and Richie leans down, rests his forehead against Eddie’s. “We could’ve danced under the bleachers, y’know? Like in one of those movies.”

“The same bleachers the seniors were totally having sex under?” Richie asks.

“We would’ve chased them right off,” says Eddie, and Richie laughs at the thought of it—two scrawny assholes like them chasing off the seniors with terrible impressions and dire predictions of exactly what is going to go crawling up their asses if they keep on taking their pants off. “And then we’d have danced. Like this.”

_I was so scared to face my fears, nobody told me that you would be here…_

They’re swaying together to the beat now, Richie’s hands on Eddie’s waist, Eddie’s hands on his neck and the small of his back. They’re so close that Richie can smell Eddie’s stupidly expensive cologne, all those subtle notes of fucking—sandalwood or whatever, Richie’s not a scent expert, okay. “I wish we did,” he says. “I wish I hadn’t ditched it early and fucked off back home.”

“Right?” Eddie says. “Really missed out on your chance there.”

“We coulda terrorized a cheerleader and her hulking jock boyfriend,” says Richie. “And then I’d probably have cried all over you the second you touched my hands.”

“If you did I would definitely have cried too,” says Eddie.

“Stan would’ve made so much fun of us,” says Richie. “Like he didn’t start weeping at a couple great tits the week before the dance, like a virginal weirdo.”

“My god, you _ass_,” says Eddie, but he’s already laughing, eyes crinkling with delight. He leans against Richie’s chest, giggles wracking his body, and a warmth bubbles up in the bottom of Richie’s still heart. “You _know_ those are just fucking birds, Rich.”

_You still look like a movie, you still sound like a song…_

“My god, this reminds me,” Richie murmurs into Eddie’s hair, his own singing voice a little rough and scratchy, “of when we were young…”

\--

“Ellen DeGeneres.”

“Mean as fuck,” says Richie.

“I thought you guys would get along better,” Eddie says, flipping the burger over once he’s sure this side is cooked enough.

“What, because she’s gay and I’m gay and we’re both comedians?” Richie snorts out a derisive laugh, and shakes his head. “Nope. We met a couple times and we’ve never gotten along.”

“But you were on her _show_ twice,” says Eddie, pressing down on the patty with the spatula. He’s changed out of his work clothes into something a little cozier, a white shirt and dark sweatpants and an apron, and Richie can’t help but watch his forearms. God, he wants him. “And you guys seemed to have fun with each other.”

“Yeah, it’s called acting,” says Richie. “Trust me, behind the scenes, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses and fucking—free cars and shit.” He taps his fingers against the table, some part of him marveling at how weirdly domestic this all is. Take out the murder clown taking up real estate in the back of Richie’s mind, and this could just be a regular evening, Eddie cooking and Richie making smart comments, the two of them chattering about Hollywood and work. “She’s famous for being an asshole around town,” Richie says, “so I’m not the first person she’s ever been one to.”

Eddie leans away from the frying pan, consulting the recipe website he’s pulled up on his phone again. “Okay, uh, what about—Taylor Swift?” he asks. “You guys dated for, what, four months back in 2014? What was it like?”

Richie chortles. “Barely,” he says. “She was rebounding from a break-up and I was trying to fix me, y’know?” He props his chin up on his hand and sighs. “In retrospect, that relationship was fucked from the start.”

Eddie’s looking at him now, somehow both deeply sad and a little furious at the Hollywood machine on Richie’s behalf. It’s—weird. Richie’s never had someone be sad and furious on his behalf at Hollywood before, at least not without first paying them to be. Richie himself has long since been desensitized to the whole mess. It’s the price he’s paid, after all. “You shouldn’t have had to _fix_ anything about you,” says Eddie.

Richie shrugs, looking down at the table, at his fingernails. “It was fucked up,” he agrees. “I dragged her into it, too. We _liked_ each other just fine, but—well, you’ve probably heard the song.”

“She wrote a _song_ about you?” Eddie squawks.

“Yeah, it was a hit single and everything,” says Richie. “Did you—Did you really not realize it was about me?”

“_No_,” says Eddie.

Richie chortles, says, “Congrats, Eds, I think that means you’re a fucking unicorn. Literally everyone else I knew clocked it was me within like, five lines.”

“I had magic clown amnesia!” Eddie says, raising his hand to do that thing where it cuts through the air as he talks. “I didn’t even know who you fucking were besides, like, some comedian with shitty jokes he didn’t write! I just thought it was a good song!”

“It _is_, it’s so fucking catchy,” says Richie. “I’m not even mad she eviscerated my ass for three minutes and twenty-eight seconds, at least she’s concise about it.” He hums the opening bars, says, “But she was real nice, when we were dating.”

“I’m never going to be able to listen to that album again,” Eddie huffs, before turning back to the burgers and checking the website on his phone again.

“What about you?” Richie asks.

“What _about_ me?”

“You lived in New York. You ever meet anyone there that kinda just, like, embedded themselves in your head somehow?”

Eddie shrugs, flipping the burgers in the pan over. “Other than the occasional pickpocketing and mugging, not really,” he says, absently. “Oh, except in college. I met all kinds of people in college, that was a good time.” There’s a nostalgia in his voice, and Richie imagines he’s smiling down at the steaks, a little sad at the memory. “There was Veronica Sawyer, we used to be roommates. She was in Journalism, last I heard she was writing a nonfiction book about some landmark legal case. We used to hang out at restaurants together, and I’d pretend to propose on her birthday so we could get free shit.”

“You _rascal_,” says Richie, impressed.

Eddie laughs, and the sound of it is so beautiful Richie wants to catch it in a bottle, get drunk off his laugh alone. It’s the laugh he’s been chasing without knowing it his whole career. Fuck his die-hard Trashmouth Tozier fans, fuck the Emmy Awards, fuck having a career—if he can make Eddie laugh like that, like when they were kids, Richie’s good as gold.

“Yeah, we were broke and desperate assholes,” says Eddie, and isn’t that a familiar story. “Ellie Creed, she was in Social Work. Last I checked she was in New Hampshire working as a counselor for a group home, but that was five years ago, things could’ve changed since then.” He chuckles over the sizzle of the steaks, and Richie finds himself hanging off every word. “She was taking Lit classes, and she and I tried to get high together one time. It was so fucking awful for me, I swore never to do it again, but she wrote down this—off-the-cuff horror story about a cat brought back from the dead. Fucking terrified me when I had to edit it for her so she could send it around to magazines.”

“I can’t say I’ve heard that story,” says Richie.

“You wouldn’t have,” says Eddie. “I think Ellie just wanted to exorcise some personal ghosts, maybe make some money doing it. She could’ve turned it into a book, but just didn’t.” He drums his fingers against the handle of the pan, says, “I met Johnny Marinville one time, while he was writing that travelogue.”

“Wait, the writer?” Richie leans over the table, eyes wide. “You’re shitting me. You have got to be shitting me.”

“I’m not!” Eddie says, defensively. “I mean it! My coworkers and I walked out of the bar and, _bam_, there he was just pulling up on his Harley! I swear to god, Richie, it was him, I might’ve been drunk but I know who I fucking saw and talked to.”

“Holy _shit_,” says Richie.

“He was very humble,” says Eddie. “We talked about his books for a while and then we told him where the best bar on the Upper East Side was. Then he took off.” He sniffs a little. “Didn’t write about it in his book.”

“To be fair, he’s seen a shitload of drunk office drones before,” Richie says. “Did you stay in touch with them? Veronica and Ellie?”

Eddie shakes his head, ruefully. “They didn’t like Myra and she didn’t like them,” he says. “I ended up siding with her.” _Because that’s what you were supposed to do,_ he doesn’t say, but it hangs in the air between them anyway, this poisoned legacy of Sonia Kaspbrak’s. If there’s anyone Richie wishes he could’ve verbally eviscerated in a cool scene somehow, it’s her. And Eddie’s ex too, although Richie’s probably just letting his jealousy talk there. “I should probably give Ellie a call at least,” Eddie says.

“You should do that,” Richie says, encouragingly. “I know I’m great company, Eds, but you gotta admit, it’s kinda sad that you’re really only hanging out with me and the other Losers when they come into town.”

“I hang out with people!” Eddie huffs.

“Your boss and some kid from Scotland who’s scared of fairies,” says Richie. “And me. You really have to expand your social circle here.”

“I’m not staying here long,” says Eddie. “What’s the point?”

“The point?” Richie says. He hesitates a moment, because—well, it’s not like he can tell Eddie that he wants him to have a safety net, just in case this fails and Richie’s gone for good. He can’t tell Eddie that it would ease his heart if he knew that Eddie would have more people on his side than just the Losers, people he could lean on if ever Richie’s taken out of the picture. “The point,” he says, “is that I’m actually really shitty company.”

“You’re not,” says Eddie.

“Objectively, I am, but it’s cute you’re jumping to defend me even from me,” says Richie. “I’m undead and possessed by a sewer clown. I can’t hold a casual conversation with a stranger without having to physically restrain my chaperone from eating them.” He gestures to the hole in his chest, and adds, “Also, I think for most people the chest hole is a fucking huge turn-off. I’m just saying, you’ve gotta expand your social circle. Maybe join a book club.”

Eddie recoils at the suggestion, shakes his head. “What the fuck kind of book club would there even be here, in _Derry_?” he asks. “Anyway, it’s—it’s fine. I’m used to it, back in New York, I had acquaintances. Myra had more friends than I did, _she_ was a lot more social than I was.” He grimaces, which, hey, at least he’s aware of how it sounds, because Richie is sitting here wrestling once more with the memory of the sheer loneliness of both their lives before Mike called.

“At the risk of sounding like a nagging wife,” says Richie, “Eds. You need more friends.” He pauses. “Nobody like the Losers, ‘course, I don’t think there’s anyone like the Losers, but—someone else you can bitch to about the interns, when I’m indisposed.” Or when he’s gone for good.

“I’m not exactly a friendly guy,” Eddie points out.

“Alcohol makes everybody friendlier,” says Richie. “You met Sean at the Falcon, yeah? You could meet other people at the Falcon.”

“Oh, yeah, sure, other men cruising for hook-ups,” Eddie huffs.

“Besides that,” says Richie.

“Why do you want me to make more friends all of a sudden?” Eddie asks. “Especially here in Derry? I’m not staying long here, once we get you back.”

_You might not get me back._ Richie forces a bright smile onto his face, and says, “Well, see, it’s killing me to see you surrounded by books and staring at your laptop all day. Maybe I want you to have some human contact before you start thinking of other people in terms of like, algorithms and shit.”

“I’m not surrounded by books all day,” says Eddie, baffled. He turns back to the pan and flips his burgers back over, and continues, “I get plenty of human interaction at the library, I talk to Cathy and everyone else in the financial department and the interns. I get _too much interaction_ with people like the fucking board and the repair guys.”

“Outside of work,” says Richie. “And don’t say the Losers! That goes without saying. We’re all a bunch of fucked-up, slightly codependent assholes.”

Eddie pauses a moment, then sighs. “I’ll call Veronica and Ellie,” he says. “I don’t want to have to go _back_ to Derry to hang out with someone.”

“You did for me,” Richie says.

“Well, yeah, duh,” says Eddie. “It’s you.” He casts a sideways glance at Richie, a corner of his lips quirking upward, and he says, softly, “You’re my exception to a lot of things.”

Richie looks down at his hands, pale and kinda grey-ish, their pallor like that of a corpse’s. Patches of white are creeping up his wrists again, and Richie absently scratches at them with a fingernail, trying to scrape off the makeup.

Trying not to listen to It, in the back of his mind, hissing, **_he left you. he left you. he LEFT you._**

\--

After Richie’s devoured the burger steaks (with a terrifying speed that Eddie would be frightened by if it wasn’t the same speed fifteen-year-old Richie used to inhale burgers with), Eddie makes them a tub full of popcorn and drags Richie to the couch in what used to be the townhouse’s minibar, because he isn’t going to get sewer water all over his good sheets, dammit. The couch, meanwhile, has probably seen worse, given it’s secondhand.

Eddie did in fact thoroughly clean and disinfect it, because he’s not fucking stupid. After this he’s gonna do it again, which is a small price to pay to have Richie near him. He laces his hand into Richie’s after he clicks on _Trading Places_ on Netflix, and curls up into his side, making sure to keep his hand in contact with Richie’s, watching the way the greying pallor of Richie’s skin warms into a more human color, though still pale. Just the kind of pale that hasn’t seen the sun in a while, though.

“Hey, Eds,” says Richie, while Eddie Murphy, on Eddie’s laptop screen, is trying to fast-talk his way past a couple of police officers, “d’you remember when we were thirteen, and we stole my dad’s VHS for this movie, and we watched this while he and Mom were off in Bangor for their anniversary?”

“You said Jamie Lee Curtis’s tits were hot way too loudly, yeah, I remember,” says Eddie. In retrospect, that should’ve been a gigantic fucking clue as to Richie’s future sexual preferences, because no straight person says shit like that so loudly unless they’re not as straight as they want to be. “I also remember we were just—pressed up like this under the blanket.”

“I think I popped a boner every time you moved,” Richie says. “I actually barely remember the movie. I just remember suffering what felt like the absolute worst case of blue balls.”

“Poor you,” says Eddie, rolling his eyes theatrically.

Eddie Murphy, onscreen, ambles away from the officers, proclaiming his sudden recovery as a miracle. Eddie remembers this movie, sort of, remembers pressing up against Richie and leaning against him the same way he’s doing now, the two of them just trying to share some body heat on a cold autumn night. He remembers the basics of the plot, some Prince and the Pauper swap involving a bet between terrible rich people, but it’s been a long time. He’s not much of a movie guy, either, too busy to sit down and watch a movie just for the hell of it.

Eddie brushes his thumb over Richie’s knuckles now. Not much of a movie guy, but here he is. “Did you ever meet any of them?” he asks.

“Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd, yeah,” says Richie. “I actually worked with Murphy. Like, on just one scene, and as a cameo, but it counts. I saw Jamie Lee Curtis at a Wal-Mart once, but she was buying milk so I didn’t tell her I’d seen her tits once.”

“Oh, wow,” says Eddie, “you learned basic manners.”

“I know!” Richie says. “It’s a fucking miracle.” He yawns, and Eddie’s eyes are dragged down to check his teeth. They look human at the moment, and thank god for that. Richie looks pretty much _human_ in general, right now, just paler than he should be with dark circles under his eyes. The only thing off about him are the gold flecks in his eyes, a reminder that there’s a monster in the back of Richie’s head that despises Eddie for figuring this out: holding Richie’s hand means It _can’t_ assert its will over Richie’s body, like it could in Bev’s old building.

_Fuck you,_ Eddie thinks viciously. _He’s ours, he’s mine, you can’t have him._

“Was that the only time?” Eddie asks, out loud.

“Well,” says Richie, after a moment. “I was supposed to start working on a horror movie in November, and she was starring in it. But I guess they’ll have to get somebody else to play one of Michael Myers’ many, _many_ victims, now.” He sighs, gustily. “There goes my big break,” he says, mock-sorrowful.

“Wait,” says Eddie, sitting up, “there’s a new _Halloween_ movie coming up?”

“Uh, yeah, they’re retconning all the other movies that came after and calling this one a direct sequel,” says Richie.

Eddie squints at him. “Should you be telling me all this?” he asks.

“It’s not like they can sue me,” Richie says. “I’m dead. Legally, that means my NDA doesn’t count anymore.”

“That is not how NDAs work,” says Eddie. “And I’d know because I have signed _a fuckton_.” Mostly just for mergers and the occasional scandal regarding a superior, but an NDA is an NDA is an NDA no matter which industry it’s in. Probably. Maybe. Eddie has never bothered to check what an NDA would be like in the entertainment industry.

“What are they gonna do?” Richie says. He gestures to the hole in his chest. “I’m a fucking undead sewer monster.”

“So, pretty close to a lawyer, then,” says Eddie, without thinking.

Richie breaks into a fit of laughter then, although that could just be the movie leaning hard into the comedy of having Eddie Murphy running circles around a table while being chased by police officers. Richie’s hand shifts from Eddie’s to hold onto his shoulder, as if he needs support, and Eddie awkwardly reaches up with his other hand to gently pat over Richie’s knuckles.

“Thank fucking god,” Richie gasps, “you never went into comedy. You’d have blown me out of the water from your first show.”

“I would have puked onstage out of stress,” says Eddie, “and that would’ve killed any comedy career I had. So yours is safe.”

“How thoughtful,” says Richie, trying to catch his breath. His hand wanders back down again, and Eddie catches it, lays it down between them.

“You’re welcome,” says Eddie, knocking his knee into Richie’s.

The movie goes on, with scattered bits of commentary from Richie about the production or the actors or the director and Eddie making surprised noises in response. After the scene where Dan Aykroyd gets thrown in jail after being framed, though, Eddie says, “Why did they get interred in Derry, anyway?”

“Hm?”

“Your parents,” says Eddie.

Richie huffs out a breath. “They loved this town,” he says. “I never understood why, but they really loved this town. Broke my dad’s heart to have to move away, but it was easier to move than to keep shuttling back and forth when they found a better treatment center, y’know?” He runs the fingers of his free hand through his hair. “But Maggie and Went, they always planned to be buried here, in Derry, where they were born and raised and fell in love. After Mags went, I figured—well, someone had to, I guess.” He pauses, then adds, “I had the funeral in Bangor, where she was living before she died. I didn’t want to go back to Derry, even just to bury her next to Went.”

“Is that possible?” Eddie asks. “Hold the funeral in one city, then have them buried in a completely different town?”

“If you’ve got enough money, sure,” says Richie. “She wanted to be next to him.”

Eddie thinks about Frank’s lonely headstone, Sonia’s ashes somewhere in a New York mausoleum. Try as he might, he can’t imagine his mother and his father wanting to be buried near each other the way Wentworth and Maggie did. He barely remembers much about Frank Kaspbrak, but he does remember how his mother would never quite approach his father’s bed, as if terrified she would _catch_ something from him. And she’d keep Eddie back, too, no matter how Eddie struggled and cried.

He remembers walking into Wentworth’s hospital room after the man had been diagnosed, and finding Richie sitting near his dad’s hospital bed, holding his mother’s hand while she wept.

“You know,” Eddie says, quietly, “my mom wanted me to put her on the fireplace mantle.”

“Seriously?” Richie asks. “Actually, you know what, I’m not surprised, just majorly creeped out.”

“Yeah, Myra and I thought so too,” says Eddie. “That’s why she’s in a mausoleum in New York and not on top of the fucking fireplace.”

“Oh, good,” says Richie, relaxing. “Would be fucking awkward to have, like, your mom’s ashes around here. I’d never be able to stop mourning her sweet, luscious—”

“Beep fucking beep, Rich,” says Eddie.

“—apple pies!” Richie says. “Don’t beep me for fucking pies!”

“She never baked a pie in her life and _you fucking know it_, dickhead,” says Eddie.

“She baked me a pie once,” says Richie, “after I gave her the best orgasm of her life.”

Eddie picks up a throw pillow and sticks it in Richie’s face for a few seconds while Richie laughs. “I’m going to kill you after I save you,” Eddie informs him.

Richie snorts out a laugh. “And waste all your effort?” he says. “Yeah, right.”

\--

Richie falls asleep against him, halfway through the movie. Eddie knows this because Richie snores like a freight train, and because at some point they ended up adjusting their positions so that now they’re lying on the couch together with the laptop still on the coffee table, with Eddie’s back pressed to Richie’s front and their hands laced together. So Richie’s snoring is vibrating against Eddie’s body.

It’s kind of nice.

Eddie would be okay, if this was the rest of his life—not managing to finish movies because Richie’s fallen asleep, his hands and Richie’s laced together. Like this, Eddie can close his eyes and pretend, for a moment, that they’re in a sunlit home in LA, and Richie’s hands are warm, and the only thing they really have to worry about is who Bev will make the best man for her wedding to Ben, because Eddie refuses to settle for a lesser position and Richie has been dying to make the funniest best man speech in the history of best man speeches. Like this, Eddie can pretend, for a little while, that everything is okay, that everything is all right, that they killed It the first time and he and Richie faced college and New York and Hollywood together, hand in hand.

When he opens his eyes, he’s still in the Derry Townhouse, and Richie’s hands are still cold. The spots of white on his wrists, interrupted by pinkish-grey (or greyish-pink) healing skin, are a cruel reminder of reality: that Richie is on borrowed time, and it’s running out on them.

A lyric drifts unbidden into Eddie’s head: _if you only had time._

He brushes a thumb over Richie’s knuckles. _I love you,_ he thinks, helplessly.

It hurts to love, he realizes this now. It always hurts to love, because love is opening up the most vulnerable parts of yourself to one person and letting them have a go at you, and Eddie doesn’t have a great track record there. His mother tried to squeeze him into a box, Myra did the same out of good intentions. It’s probably incredibly reckless to open back up a third time.

But it’s Richie. Richie loves him back the same way.

Pushing aside the part of his brain shrieking about sewer water and waterborne diseases, Eddie lifts one of Richie’s hands to his lips and kisses his knuckles.

Richie stirs, blinks awake, as onscreen Dan Aykroyd takes a defiant bite out of his stolen salmon. “_eds?_” Richie mumbles. There’s an odd quality to his voice that Eddie doesn’t quite like. It sounds like—that thing they do in music, where the singer’s voice is duplicated to add emphasis to a line. Uneasily, Eddie finds himself thinking about Pennywise, remembering its singsong, giggly voice.

“Hey, Richie,” says Eddie. “You missed a pretty good chunk of the movie. I think we’re coming close to the end.”

“_damn,_” Richie says, and shakes his head as if to shake off the sleepiness and disorientation of waking up. When he next speaks, his voice is normal again: “Shit, I fell asleep?”

“Yeah,” says Eddie. “I didn’t feel like waking you up, so.”

Richie says nothing for a moment. Then he says, very quietly, his voice full of wonder, “I didn’t dream of It.”

Eddie stills, and blinks at Richie. “What?”

“If it’s not you I’m dreaming of, it’s the clown,” Richie explains. “I don’t—I don’t always _remember_ those, but they’re—they’re fucked up as hell, I know that much. And I always wake up sorta halfway to something else, afterwards.” He breathes out, and says, “This might be the first time in a long time I dreamed like a regular person.”

“What’d you dream about?” Eddie asks.

Richie shrugs. “You,” he says. “But like—regular dreams are just weird, you know? So it was you, but you were playing Anthony Perkins in _The Lonely Man_, except in a Santa Claus outfit, and I was a random gunfighter who corralled monster trucks. And also I think my arms were spaghetti noodles, and I wrapped them around you?” He laughs a little. “Those are just the details I remember. I’m pretty sure it was weirder than that.”

“Why am I in a Santa Claus outfit in a Western?” Eddie asks, because he feels like that’s kinda a weird detail to leave in there.

“No idea,” says Richie. “Still hot, though.” He presses a kiss to Eddie’s temple. “I wish I could stay longer,” he says.

“You could,” Eddie says. _As long as I’m holding you. As long as I’m touching you. Don’t you see?_

“I can stay till the movie ends,” Richie says, “but after that—I love you, but I don’t trust myself not to hurt you.” He pauses, then shakes his head. “More accurately, I don’t trust _It_.”

“I trust you,” says Eddie.

Richie smiles, but there’s a sadness in his gold-flecked eyes. “So trust me when I say I’ll come back soon,” he says. “I just—I don’t want It to eat you in your sleep. I’m already pushing the limit here.” His hand pulls away, gently threads fingers through Eddie’s hair. “But I’ll come back. I’m always gonna come back to you.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” says Eddie. “Don’t think I won’t track your ass down in the Barrens to make sure you will.”

“I’m counting on that,” says Richie.


	15. wonder if i'm slipping under

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from OneRepublic's "Rescue Me".
> 
> **content warnings:** allusions in narrative to and discussions of domestic abuse (as typical for Bev). Richie's mindset and dialogue can be interpreted as suicidal ideation, although he wouldn't see it that way, more like taking down the clown with him in the worst-case scenario.

Three days after, Beverly calls Eddie while he’s eating lunch and says, “Can you leave for Bangor for a day or should I come to Derry?”

“Uh,” says Eddie. “That—depends? Hold on, I’m near a sewer right now.” He says to the storm drain, “Hey, Rich, if I leave for Bangor for a day, can you keep from eating somebody?”

“Why are you going to Bangor?” Richie asks, after swallowing a bit of fried chicken. Eddie could swear he sees a glint of Richie’s glasses in the darkness. “Is that Bev? Tell her I said hi! And—” He pauses for a moment, and makes a disgusted noise. “You know what, just tell her I said hi and maybe, if she’s volunteering to stay for a bit. I’m not passing on what Pennywise is saying, because fuck that noise.”

“Richie says hi,” says Eddie. “Also, maybe, but someone else will have to keep an eye on him. Just to make sure.”

“Yeah, I think I can get Ben to do it,” says Bev. Then she sighs. “It’s just—divorce shit,” she says, and Eddie winces in sympathy. “Ben’s a good man, but sometimes I just need to deal with this shitshow with someone who gets it. You know?”

“God, yeah, I know,” says Eddie, pinching the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t completely get it, because Myra was never as bad as Tom fucking Rogan and, at least at the beginning, he had really thought it was the closest thing either of them would ever get to love, but—he does understand Bev’s plight, in other ways. “When should I expect you guys?”

“A couple of days,” says Bev. “Tell Richie Ben’s coming and we miss him.”

“Ben’s coming and he and Bev miss you,” Eddie dutifully repeats. “I’m gonna go hang out with Bev in Bangor so we can bitch about our divorces.”

“Wait, hold on, _Ben?_” Richie asks. “You’re sure? I mean, the last time, I turned his arm into hamburger.”

“That wasn’t you, that was It and Ben knows that,” says Eddie. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, Rich, it’s okay. We know you, we know you wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, but—what if It does, again?” Richie asks.

“Then Bev and I will high-tail it back here, breaking every single traffic law in the book, and I’ll pull you back out,” says Eddie. “Right, Bev?”

“I can’t hear Richie right now, but I’m guessing he’s pulling a Bill,” says Bev. “Yes, you’re right.”

Eddie chortles, says, “You hear that, Rich? She thinks you’re acting like _Bill_.”

“She _what?_” Richie yelps, his voice hitting a higher pitch out of shock and offense. “Acting like Bill? Acting like _Bill?_”

“That I heard,” says Bev, sounding amused. “You remember, he was such a sad, tragic kid back in the day, with this huge martyr complex?”

“Tell her fuck you!” Richie says. “I don’t have a fucking _martyr complex_, I just have common sense and a clown monster squatting inside my brain!”

“Dude, Ben handled the clown once before by himself when we were kids, we all did,” says Eddie. “I think he can do it again if he has to.” He takes a bite out of his turkey sandwich, chews and swallows, then says, “Just—if you need anything from me, specifically, while I’m gone, just say the word and I’ll come back here immediately.”

“I’m not gonna tear you away from your day off with Bev, Eds, you kidding?” Richie says. “There’s a whole world outside of Derry, remember? It’ll be good for you to step back out into it every so often.”

If Eddie were more of a sap, and he _is_ kind of a huge romantic these days, he’d say something ridiculous about Richie being his whole world. It’s already in his throat, halfway to being turned into a joke (because it’s Richie, and Eddie wants to hear him laugh again), before it comes up against that familiar block. Once upon a time, _he’d_ been his mother’s whole world too, and vice versa. Christ, is that why Richie wants him to make more friends?

“I guess,” he says, instead. “Yeah, Bev, I’ll see you guys tomorrow?”

“Oh, definitely,” says Bev. “Tell Richie not to worry, I’ll bring you back in one piece.”

Eddie dutifully repeats it for Richie, who snorts and says, “Tell her I’ll try and keep Ben in one piece, too.”

\--

When Bev and Ben show up the next day, Eddie pulls them both into a three-way hug. “Do I even want to know the latest bullshit your asshole ex is trying to pull on you?” he asks Bev, as Ben is setting up his laptop to do some remote work on a contract.

“I’d rather talk about it out of Derry, if at all,” Bev demurs, and Eddie wisely drops the topic there. He leaves Bev and Ben in the lobby of the townhouse, talking quietly about her plans for a new line and the people she’s been quietly hiring to help her work on it, and goes upstairs to his room.

Once upon a time Bowers stabbed him in this very bathroom. The blood has been wiped out now, as cleanly and efficiently as the Losers once mopped down and wiped out the blood that had covered Bev’s bathroom, but Eddie still checks all the places a man could possibly hide in, and tries not to look at the shower curtain. Instead, he taps his knuckles against the porcelain surface of the sink.

“We’re headed to Bangor now,” he says into the drain. “You feeling okay?”

“Fine and dandy, Eddie,” Richie’s voice responds. “Don’t worry about me for a day, all right? I’ll probably just stay in the clubhouse, read one of the comics we left down there.”

“Good luck with that, I saw the state of them last time we were all there,” says Eddie.

“Eh,” says Richie. “I figured out a way around that.”

Eddie lets that sink in for a moment, before he says, fondly exasperated, “Did you fuck with reality just so you could read a comic book?”

“You’ve seen me stick my hand in a vending machine for a free candy bar,” says Richie. “What do you fucking think?”

“You’re incorrigible,” says Eddie, with a soft laugh. “I’ll be back later.”

“I know,” says Richie. “I love you.”

And doesn’t that just thrill Eddie to his very core. _I love you too._ “I know,” he says, instead, and Richie’s answering chuckle still echoes in the chambers of his heart as he leaves the bathroom, as he and Bev head out of the townhouse and get into the sleek little silver BMW she and Ben are renting. Purrs like a dream under his hand, although the seemingly pleasant voice issuing from the GPS grates on his nerves.

Bev switches over to radio, and Celine Dion’s voice crackles to life through the static, crooning, _and if you need me like that, it was dead long ago but it’s all coming back to me—_

“It’s so hard to resist,” Bev sings along, as Eddie pulls away from the curb, “and it’s all coming back to me—”

“I can barely recall,” Eddie joins in, because no one else is here and Bev will never sell him out to Richie for liking Celine Dion, “but it’s all coming back to me now.”

“Shit, I remember,” says Bev, with a laugh, breaking off from singing along. “You and Richie used to compete over how loud you guys could get while singing along in the clubhouse, right? You butchered _so many_ New Kids songs.”

“We didn’t butcher it, we just improved it,” says Eddie.

“Ben almost _cried_, it was so bad,” Bev says, which, okay, maybe they didn’t improve it as much as Eddie thought they did. But then again, they had been thirteen years old, on the cusp of fourteen, and all Eddie could think of was getting one over Richie. Is it any wonder they sucked?

“We used to sing in the car, me and Richie,” Eddie says now, the memories bobbing back up to the surface. “He was the first to get his license and I always got the front seat. You don’t know this, ‘cause you didn’t remember us by then, but we’d cruise all the way to Bangor sometimes, just to taste the fresh air out of Derry. And he liked that song about the car, y’know, _you got a fast car_—”

“_Is it fast enough so you can fly away?_” Bev completes. “No wonder. He always did want to get out of Derry.”

Eddie keeps his eyes on the road, watching out for pedestrians and other cars coming the other way. _And I left him down there,_ he doesn’t dare say out loud. _He wanted out of Derry but I left him here._ And that after Richie had told him he had loved him.

_There were moments of gold and there were flashes of light,_ Celine Dion sings on the radio. _There were things we’d never do again but then they’d always seemed right._

“How is he, anyway? And you?” Bev asks.

“We’re fine,” says Eddie, thinking of how Richie had curled up in the backseat of his car, sick horror written across his face. Richie is fine, right now, or else Eddie wouldn’t have even thought about briefly heading to Bangor, but there’s still an eldritch child-eating monster squatting in the back of Richie’s head. That kind of thing tends to undermine any claims of being fine. “As fine as we can be right now, I guess,” he amends. “He’s doing okay. Sometimes less so than other times, but I actually—I figured out a way to _keep_ him human, most of the time.”

Bev leans her head against the window, asks, “How?”

“I just hold his hand,” says Eddie. “It’s—I noticed, when I’m holding him, he looks better. More _alive_. When I’m not, he goes back to looking kinda—”

“Dead?” Bev supplies.

“Yeah,” says Eddie.

“Does he notice?”

Eddie shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think so.” In truth, he might be the only other person that Richie has touched without too much fear since Neibolt, which is frankly deeply depressing when Eddie thinks about it. “He doesn’t exactly go out and talk to other people besides us,” he says, instead. “And just me when everyone else is out of town. You know, on account of It.”

“Yeah, I can see why being possessed by a murderous eldritch being might put a dent in his social life,” says Beverly. “But he’s managing fine so far, right? Nobody’s gone missing, after all.”

Thank god for that small mercy. “I haven’t heard anything out of the radio so far,” Eddie says.

“Good,” she says. “How are _you_? With all of,” she straightens up and flails a hand towards the window, “_this_ happening? The divorce, the new job, moving back here, and Richie. Because if I were in your position, Eddie, I would not be handling it half as well as you.”

He doubts it. Bev doesn’t exactly give herself a whole lot of credit for her own strength, for her bravery in standing up against her father, against her ex-husband, against It. Eddie’s pretty sure that if it were Ben and Bev in his and Richie’s situation, Beverly would’ve found some way to drag Ben back from the dead already, come hell or high water.

But Eddie doesn’t say any of that out loud. Instead he just shrugs, and says, a little regretfully, “There wasn’t anything keeping me in New York anymore.” Besides how he used to love the city, anyway, because god, he _did_ love New York City, once upon a time. Still does even now, because you don’t fucking live in a city for over a decade without coming to love it helplessly. But it’s the sort of love that has been poisoned, and Eddie’s trying to clear the poison from his system. “And Richie’s here,” he adds.

Bev nods. “I can’t go back to Chicago,” she says. “I mean, for safety’s sake, I literally can’t go to Chicago. But—” She sighs, her hand briefly darting towards her pocket as if to pull a cigarette packet out, before she pulls her hand away, instead drumming her fingers on her knee. “I don’t think I can go back there anymore after this,” she says, smiling, but her smile doesn’t completely reach her eyes. “The friends I made there already moved away. There’s nothing left for me there but loose ends to tie off.”

“But you still miss it,” Eddie completes.

“But I still miss it,” Beverly confirms. “The deep dish pizzas, the skyline, the museums, the way the city lights look reflected in Lake Michigan late at night—” She cuts herself off, and shuts her eyes, inhaling, exhaling. “I fell in love with the city from the moment I set foot in it,” she says. “And I hate, I fucking _hate_, that I have to give it up. Because it feels like I’m letting him _win_.”

“That’s bullshit,” Eddie says, surprised by the fervor in his voice. “He’s a gigantic fucking dickbag, and if he gets to stay in Chicago, he’ll be doing it alone and with his rep in tatters. _You_ win, Bev.”

“I know that,” says Beverly. “I _know_ that, you think I don’t? But I loved it there, I really did, and giving it up feels like he took one more fucking thing from me. And he’s taken so goddamn much already, Eddie.” She rubs at her eyes with the backs of her hands, breathes out a harsh curse. “God, I fucking _hate_ him.”

“Me too,” says Eddie. He pauses. “I think Richie wouldn’t mind eating him.”

That startles a laugh out of her. “I wouldn’t mind feeding my ex to Richie, actually,” she says. “That’s probably bad, but fuck it, if there’s one person I would love to see eaten, it’d be Tom, the swine.”

“I wouldn’t feed Myra to Richie,” Eddie admits, because despite all the things they did to each other, despite how their marriage ended, he still wishes the best for her, still hopes that one day she’ll find someone who really will love her the way Eddie never could. “But my _in-laws_? Yeah. Fuck them. They’re grade-A assholes.”

“I never met mine,” says Bev. “They died before our wedding, and thank fucking god for that small mercy.” Then she sighs. “Wish Mrs. Hanscom didn’t, though. She made the best sandwiches.”

Eddie turns right at an intersection, mentally plotting their route out of Derry. It’s a somewhat cloudy day, but he’s double-checked the weather on his weather app and on the radio, it shouldn’t rain today. “She did,” he says, a little nostalgic for Arlene Hanscom’s unparalleled cooking. “Remember, Ben would split his with one of us, because he was watching his weight? Richie always tried to sit next to him because Mrs. Hanscom made better sandwiches than Mrs. Tozier.”

“You and Richie used to fight over who’d sit next to Ben and get that half a sandwich,” says Bev.

“He usually gave them to _you_,” says Eddie. “And then I’d have to split Richie’s instead.” Eddie’s own mother made him healthy snacks, certainly, but they were never as good as Richie’s or Ben’s sandwiches. Sometimes, often after an argument where Eddie had put his foot down about something, he’d eat his sandwich and end up in the bathroom shitting his brains out. He’d found out, a little while into his adult life, that his mother kept laxatives in her medicine cabinet, and it hadn’t been too hard to put two and two together from there.

Marrying Myra had been a desperate escape, and at least, for all the faults in their marriage, she’d never snuck laxatives into his food to keep him inside the house, punish him for standing his ground on the few things he couldn’t compromise on. That much he’s grateful for.

“I think Ben knows what the secret ingredient to her chicken soup is,” says Bev, pulling Eddie out of his thoughts.

“There’s no secret ingredient, I keep telling you that,” says Eddie, picking up the thread of the old argument.

“There is _no way_ anything could taste that good without a secret ingredient,” Bev argues, more for the sake of it than a real belief.

“Yeah right,” says Eddie, derisively, as he turns left.

\--

As soon as Ben’s video call to his foreman is done, he takes his sketchbook out and migrates from the townhouse to the park. He watches a bunch of kids, no older than around fourteen or so, rehearsing on the outdoor stage, dressed in Elizabethan-era outfits as they declaim to their unimpressed director. He looks down at his sketchbook and begins to sketch out the outline of the stage, absently noting the height of the stage from the ground and the apparent lack of disability ramps. Maybe he can poke Eddie into demanding disability ramps.

The whole stage could be better, really, if he thinks about it. He remembers nearly falling through a rotting floorboard one time while playing Bottom, maybe he can get the floor fixed. He hadn’t liked playing Bottom, because he’d wanted to be Lysander, who didn’t get turned into a donkey, but that’s the thing about being a fat kid. You really only get the comedic roles, for all that you’re not all that funny—that was, and still is, more Richie than anything.

The thought of Richie twists his heart around into knots. For a moment, all he can think of is Eddie trying to pull free of him and Mike, screaming Richie’s name as the house collapsed in front of them. Even the broken rib he’d been suffering then (mysteriously healed later) had paled in comparison to the sheer grief and heartbreak they’d all felt.

If Richie had been in Eddie’s place, Ben knows: he would’ve stayed with Eddie. It would’ve taken all of them to drag him away from the house, and Richie would’ve fought the whole time the same way Eddie did. The only real difference between them is the size—Eddie’s short enough to pick up even when he’s furiously kicking, light enough to haul away if needed even while being wildly elbowed. Richie was not. Is not.

God. Losing Richie had hurt badly enough. Losing both him and Eddie in one go would’ve been a blow Ben isn’t sure any of them would’ve recovered from. And now here they are again, risking that loss all over again for the chance of saving him from Pennywise.

Sometimes Ben really hates this town.

The lines on his pad form the outline of the stage, but with small improvements here and there—a disability ramp in easy reach, sturdier floors, stairs from the stage to the ground. For a moment, he considers the idea of carving out space for a turntable in the middle of the floor. Might be a bit too inspired by _Hamilton_, when he thinks about it.

He adds it anyway. If it worked for the Richard Rodgers Theater…

He hears the bushes rustle behind him. When he turns to look, an art deco postcard is lying in front of the bushes, a lighthouse prominently featured on its front. He stands, shutting his sketchbook and slipping his pencil back into its spine, and walks over to bend down and pick it up.

The back reads, _Haikus are harder / than they really should be / how’d you do it, Haystack?_

“You’re a syllable over on the last line,” says Ben, putting the postcard between the pages of his sketchbook. He glances around the park, and says, “Can we not do this here? I feel kinda weird talking to you in public.”

Another postcard drops onto his head from a tree, because Richie is a comedian and those instincts don’t just go away just ‘cause he’s been living in a sewer for a while. In fact, Ben reflects, they may have gotten much worse, considering who else has been taking up space in Richie’s head.

This postcard has _Greetings from MAINE_ printed in the front, with Maine’s famous landmarks drawn into the capital letters making up the state’s name. There’s an air of desperation to the whole thing, like this postcard is trying to shove the appeals of Maine directly in his face, begging him to _come to Maine, Jesus God, please, we’re starving here._ When he turns it over, there’s, god help him, a fucking limerick written on the back:

_There once was a sewer-dweller called Rich  
Whose poet friend had a terrible itch  
In the toe of his sock  
That spread to his cock  
To Rich in the sewers he went so he could bitch._

“Just overflowing with syllables, aren’t you,” Ben says, putting that in between the pages of his sketchbook as well. Then he sets off for the nearest storm drain, just outside the south entrance of the park.

A green rose waits for him outside the sewer when he sits down, plucked meticulously clean of thorns. Ben picks it up, and says, “What happened to red?”

“Red’s for Eddie,” comes the response, and Ben chances a glance down to see Richie peeking out of the sewers, scratching idly at his jaw where a patch of white is beginning to disappear. “And fuck you, I did my best with the poems. I fucking _hated_ writing poetry in English class.”

“You tried to bribe me once to write your poetry assignments for you, I remember,” says Ben, fondly.

“Everyone thought I was in love with Bev for a month!” Richie complains. “You couldn’t keep your boner in your pants for a second?”

“I’m pretty sure you had an idea of what you were signing up for when you got me to write your poetry for you,” says Ben, opening his sketchbook once more and flipping past work sketches. Idly, he starts to sketch out another building, the ramshackle movie theater where once upon a time the Losers used to go to watch all the latest flicks.

“And I regret it so much,” Richie sighs. “What’re you up to?”

“Sketching,” says Ben.

“Thought you were gonna do work,” Richie says.

“I did,” says Ben. “I’m working remotely, and I don’t have another meeting until three in the afternoon.”

“Who’re you meeting with?”

“Clients in Hartford, Connecticut about to build a new museum near Mark Twain’s house,” says Ben. “They want us to put up something that looks like Huckleberry Finn might’ve lived in it.” He’d liked Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, as a kid, had whiled away hours in the library adventuring with them in the town of St. Petersburg and along the Mississippi River. Richie had called him a nerd for enjoying the classics, but Ben had seen him reading the same books once, so he didn’t really take it personally.

Now, Richie says, “Wasn’t Huckleberry Finn, y’know, _homeless_? That’s how he kept getting into so much shit.”

“I’m just going with what the client wants, man,” Ben says, with a quiet laugh. “He _did_ live in one place once, with the Widow Douglas. That’s what I’m going with.”

“Ooh, quaint and vaguely fucked in a moral sense, I like it,” says Richie.

“Quaint I can do,” says Ben. “How would I embody _morally fucked_?”

“No fucking idea, man,” says Richie. “You’re the architect here, not me. I’m just the guy hanging out in the sewers trying not to eat people.”

“How’s that going, anyway?” Ben asks.

“Could be better, could be worse,” says Richie. “Yeah, I haven’t eaten anyone, but I—” He stops, then sighs. “Don’t tell Eddie,” he says, “but I think I’m getting used to smelling the fear on people. And it smells like—y’know how when you pass by a birthday party or a picnic out in a public area, and if you’re close enough you can just about catch the scent of all that food? It sets off your stomach, that smell, and suddenly you’re well fucking aware of how much time it’s been since you last ate.”

Yeah, Ben knows that feeling a little too well. “You do eat, though,” he points out. “Eddie drops off lunch for you and everything. He _walks into KFC_ for you.” Which, for Eddie, is probably a sacrifice on par with Samson bringing down the pillars on the Philistines.

“Well, yeah,” says Richie. “I appreciate his sacrifice whenever he walks into a fast food restaurant, and his burger steaks taste _great_, don’t get me wrong. It’s just—” There’s a sigh from the sewers. “Burger steaks and fried chicken don’t feel _fear_. And that’s what It really wants, not just the meat. If it liked just the meat alone we’d have a rash of missing pets and livestock, not kids.”

“Do you—” Ben starts, then stops. But he has to ask the question, so, “Do _you_ need the fear, Rich?”

“Fuck, no,” says Richie. Then he pauses, and shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I know I need the meat more than the fear, ‘cause I’m trucking along just fine on fried chicken from KFC, but I think It _needed_ the fear along with the fresh kid meat. If it didn’t, it woulda just eaten Beverly years ago instead of trying to scare her shitless. I think—I think there’s a shift, at some point, where the fear stops being seasoning you can live without and starts being more than that.”

Ben drums his fingernails against the front cover of his sketchbook, anxiety churning low in his gut. Suddenly his mind lights on a memory—It, wearing Richie’s face, pressing claws into Ben’s skin deep enough to draw blood, deep enough to hurt. It had wanted Ben to be, at that moment, scared of one of his best, closest friends, and now Ben wonders uneasily what else It wanted then. Maybe to kick off that shift, and in as viscerally traumatic a way as possible.

Richie says, quietly, “Anxiety and worry smell pretty close to fear, y’know.”

“What, you can smell that too?” Ben asks, surprised.

“Yeah, I’m like fuckin’ Daredevil down here,” says Richie. “Except my super-senses are only attuned to fear and fear-adjacent feelings, and I’m only half-blind. But I can smell the worry on you, Hanscom. Out with it, is it trouble in paradise?”

Ben sighs. “There’s no trouble between me and Bev that we can’t take care of,” he says. “If there is, you’d already have some idea off Eddie.” They always were a unit—where one went, the Losers knew, the other was sure to be. It’s why it hadn’t been so shocking to Ben that Richie and Eddie had become a couple, although the timing could really have been way better. “I’m really a lot more worried about you. This point where the shift occurs—have you got any idea what triggers it?”

Richie’s silent for a long moment. Then he says, “I don’t know. Maybe after I eat someone for the first time. Maybe if I willingly give up control to It. Maybe if I do the shapeshifting, and not It trying to change me before I can catch it. Maybe—but I don’t _know_, not for sure. The clown won’t tell me, obviously, it just taunts me with the not knowing.” He breathes out, and says, “Don’t tell Eddie anything I just told you. Please.”

“Why not?” Ben asks. “It’d be easier if he knew. He could figure something out. We all could, Rich, you just have to say the word.”

“He’s done enough for me already,” Richie says. “He moved to _Derry_ for me. He’s doing so much and you’re not here, you don’t _see it_, he uprooted his entire fucking life in New York because _I needed him_, and I still need him.”

“So? He likes being needed,” says Ben. “He wants to help. You didn’t force him to come here, he fucking volunteered for the job.” He pauses. “You know that, right?” he asks, suddenly. “Mike was going to come back here, but Eddie stepped up in his place. Because it’s _you_, Richie, and it’s him, and he loves you, maybe more than anything else.” And he’d know, because he loves Bev the same way.

“I know that,” says Richie. “You think I don’t? I’m not fucking _stupid_, Ben. I love him, and he loves me, and I don’t want to hurt him. I _never_ want to hurt him.” His voice wavers and cracks, as he says, “If I tell him any of this, if I tell him—I don’t want to break his heart. I don’t want to make him _worry_ more than he already has. I want him to be okay. I want him to make it out of Derry alive, I want him to be _happy_, and I don’t fucking care what happens to me beyond that.”

Ben sucks in a breath. “Not even if you die?” he asks, quietly.

There’s another silence, this one loaded. “I saw him in the Deadlights, under Neibolt,” Richie says, softly. “I saw him die. I couldn’t let that happen, even if it meant—”

“You knew,” says Ben, understanding flashing across his mind as the memory of that terrible moment replays. “You knew you’d die if you pulled him out of the way.”

“I didn’t fucking want to, obviously,” says Richie. “I had dates in Reno. I had shows to do. If I had any other choice in the matter, I wouldn’t have picked the one where I got my very own missing poster. But I thought—if it comes down to me and him, I’d rather Eddie made it out, because a world without Eddie’s a shit world. I still think that.”

And the hell of it is, Ben knows exactly what that feels like. If it comes down to him and Bev, he’ll choose Bev every time, because he loves her, because he wants her to live happily. Of course Richie feels the same way about Eddie.

“You know he was a mess after you died?” Ben asks, instead.

“I’m—sorta aware,” says Richie. “He told me a little bit. Not a whole lot.”

“Did he tell you that one time he called me drunk after watching one of your episodes on fucking _Friends_, and he cried about missing you even then and not knowing it?” Ben says, and the sharp intake of breath from the sewer gives away Richie’s answer immediately. “You didn’t? Yeah, he wouldn’t have told you that. Or about the one time I had to drive him back to his hotel room from a bar, his first week separated from his wife.” He huffs out a breath. “Wouldn’t have wanted you to worry about how he was doing before Derry, either.”

“Weren’t you there for him?” Richie asks, and his voice has that bite of recrimination to it. Ben doesn’t flinch away, though, he knows Richie well enough by now to know this is just how he reacts when Eddie’s hurt—lashing out at the nearest target, who right now happens to be Ben. And Ben at forty is a sight better than Bill at thirteen at taking it and shrugging it off.

“We checked on him regularly,” Ben says. “Rich, we were _all_ grieving you, of course we were there for each other. God, I couldn’t get through _any_ standup special without crying, because all I could think of was that you weren’t the one onstage and they were, and how unfair that was. But Eddie—I think we knew his was different from the second the house collapsed.” Because Eddie had collapsed at the exact same time, falling to his knees and doubling over, barely able to breathe. “If we lose you again, I think he’d take it worse than any of us would.”

“Yeah, for a while, then he’ll be fine,” says Richie.

“Yeah, no,” says Ben. “If it was Eddie in your place, and you lost him again, how would you react?”

“I’d have let the house collapse on me the first time, that’s how,” says Richie.

“I have no idea where to even start with unpacking that,” Ben says, a little concerned about how casual the admission is. “But I’m pretty sure Eddie’s got an equivalent.”

“But he’s doing so _well_!”

“He’s crazy about you,” says Ben. “You’re crazy about him. He’s only doing great because he believes he can get you out, it’s just a matter of finding the right ritual, the right tale, the right equivalent of an instruction manual for exorcising ghosts of monster clowns.”

“And you?” Richie asks.

Ben huffs out a breath. “I do too,” he says. “I know we can get you out, and working together we can do pretty much anything. But—” He stops, because he doesn’t want to admit it, because some part of him is _sure_ speaking it out loud will make it feel real, or worse, tangible enough for It to grab. But he has to say it, so: “I know there’s a risk it won’t work out.”

Richie says, “I’m pretty scared of that too.” There’s another silence, and he says, quietly, “If that does happen—I don’t have to ask you to look after Eddie, ‘cause I know us, I know we’ll have each other’s backs no matter fucking what, but if it happens, can you make sure he doesn’t try to throw his life away on me? Can you hold him back so he doesn’t run into a fucking sewer to pull out my dead body?”

For a heartbeat, Ben is seized with the urge to slap Richie, for asking that of him. Eddie had aggravated a broken rib, _that_ was how hard he was fighting against them when they’d pulled him away from Richie that first, horrible time. He’d felt Eddie’s heartbroken scream right down in his fucking _bones_, and his own heart had cracked right then and there. How can Richie ask this of him again? To pull Eddie away, and shove down his own devastation so Eddie’s doesn’t _kill him_?

...right. That’s why.

“Yeah,” says Ben. “I can do that.”


	16. throwing my tears to the fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Greyson Chance's "Bad to Myself".
> 
> **content warnings:** clown and all clown-adjacent warnings (canon-typical horror and mindfuckery). homophobia from the clown. discussion of physically abusive ex-spouse (Tom). Eddie has some complicated feelings about Myra, but personally the writer has written her as abusive in the same vein as Sonia Kaspbrak. discussion of demonic possession. mention of child death and drowning, implied to be caused by clown.

Way back in the day, Eddie used to think of Bangor as _glamorous_. In retrospect, that just goes to show how much of a dumbass kids can be, especially small-town kids, because the Queen City of Maine isn’t all that shiny and novel and brilliant. Not the way New York City is. Definitely dealing with about the same amount of pollution and traffic as a typical American city, though.

He and Bev pull up to a place called Seasons Bar & Grille—yeah, really, that’s how they spell _Grille_. No, Eddie doesn’t know why the extra e either, but he does not have high hopes for the food here.

Bev strides in ahead of him, pushing the doors open and making a beeline straight for the bar. Eddie rushes in after her, eyeing the clientele with a wary eye—right now, at this time of day, it’s mostly just truckers trying to catch some game. Basketball, from the looks of it, which has never really appealed to Eddie. Now, if it were _baseball_, he’d be more interested, he remembers that he used to sit on the sidelines all the time at softball games in the old baseball diamond near the Tracker Brothers’ garage. Sometimes he even got to _play_, usually urged on by Richie.

He misses Richie already.

He hurries to the counter, pulling out a chair beside Beverly and ordering an iced tea for himself, because someone’s going to have to drive back, and Eddie’s not going to make Beverly do it. Bev shoots him a grateful look, then orders peach schnapps and Seasons’ alfredo off the menu.

“I’ll just have the soup of the day,” Eddie adds.

“It’s broccoli cheese soup,” says the guy.

_I’m lactose intolerant, never mind,_ Eddie almost says, before the rest of his mind catches up with him and says, _Hey, dumbass, you were never lactose intolerant. That was your mom._

“How big a bowl can you put it in?” is what comes out of his mouth instead.

As soon as the guy manning the counter leaves, Bev turns to Eddie and says, quietly, “Doesn’t it feel like we’re getting away with something?”

“God, yes,” says Eddie. “I don’t even—who puts broccoli and cheese together in a _soup_ and expects it to taste any good?”

“Think about it like an adventure,” Bev says. “I know I am. You know my ex made me go on diets, all the time? No spaghetti, no alfredo, no chocolate ice cream, nothing that could make me any fatter than I already was.” She tucks stray strands of hair behind her ear, and says, with a tight smile, “First thing I did was throw out my bathroom scale. Ben hasn’t thrown his out yet, but he’s seeing a therapist, so there’s hope.”

“Jesus,” says Eddie, with feeling. He’s not going to feed Tom Rogan to Richie, he decides. He’s going to kill the guy himself, if Bev will let him, although he’s pretty sure the other Losers will be lining up right behind him to take a swing too. “You know,” he says, “I barely ever ate dinner with Myra. She’d start talking about whatever she saw on the Internet—she believed everything she read on Facebook, y’know? Especially if it had to do with health. There was this wild hoax going around about some vengeful guy running around Queens propositioning drunk guys and giving them AIDS, and she was always terrified I’d get it if I ever went out drinking with my coworkers. Kept insisting I should stay inside the house, where she could see me, where I could be safe.” He drums his fingers on the counter. “So I just stayed late at work, instead, and never mind if she texted me every fifteen fucking minutes. I’d only come back once I was sure she was asleep.” Like a criminal, like he’d done something wrong, like he’d snuck out of the house instead of just stayed at work and done some overtime.

Bev nods. “I’d tell him I had to get done with this design before I went back home, sometimes,” she says, her voice low as though she’s confessing. “And then I’d make it out to be an all-night job. I’d pull some of the stitches, I’d fuck it up deliberately, so I’d _have_ to fix it up, and then whenever he texted me to make sure I’d take a picture to show him I wasn’t done yet. Better than going back home to him.” Her fingers slip towards her pocket again, before she pulls them away with a sigh. “I did it with Ben, once. He only texted me once the whole night to ask me what I wanted for dinner. It’s—_weird_, because I thought he’d want to check on what I was doing.”

“Right?” Eddie says. “I mean, with Richie, it’s always weird, because of the fucking clown, but he gets me _flowers_ for no reason. And they’re _roses_, and they’ve got cut stems so he got them from a florist, and—nobody’s ever done that, Bev, not for me.”

“When I came back to the yacht after my,” and Bev crooks her fingers twice, “_all-nighter_, Ben was fast asleep, and he’d made dinner for me. And it was _Italian_, so he was listening when I said I wanted, and I’m quoting my text verbatim here, disgustingly unhealthy Italian.” A corner of her mouth turns up. “He left a note,” she says, “apologizing because he’d thrown it together from what was in the pantry, and he didn’t have any meatballs, just tofu. It tasted pretty good, anyway, despite that.”

“How’d we get so lucky, huh?” Eddie says.

“No fucking idea,” says Bev, as her drink and alfredo are deposited in front of her. She takes a sip of her drink, sighs, and says, “My ex is claiming my designs are his intellectual property.”

“That mother_fucker_,” says Eddie, with feeling.

“Yeah,” says Bev. “We’re fighting his claims in court—he isn’t getting another cent out of anything I made, if I can help it.” She sighs, pressing the tips of her fingers to her temples. “But you’d think at some point he’d just give the fuck up, and call it a day. I mean, he has to be exhausted with this, right? All this is really doing is ruining his reputation, and dragging shit on for longer than it should go.”

“He doesn’t give a shit about his rep,” says Eddie, thinking of Myra withholding the boxes of _his_ possessions, with tokens of his friends that mean nothing to her. She isn’t a bad person, no, nothing like Bev’s husband, but she never liked losing either. Especially not if the loss fucked with the image she was trying to maintain. “He just wants to make you fucking bleed.”

Bev looks up at him from her schnapps. “Did she?” she asks, quietly.

“We shared a storage unit and a house,” says Eddie. “Getting my shit back from her was—hard, to say the least.”

“_God_, I’m sorry,” Bev says. “That is fucked up. You didn’t even have anything she really wanted too, right?”

“Nope,” says Eddie.

“Me too,” says Bev. “What the fuck would he even want with my wardrobe and makeup? I mean it, what the _fuck_? He _hates_ sewing, and now I have to threaten legal action to get him to give me back a fucking _sewing kit_, it’s ridiculous.”

“He’s a piece of shit,” says Eddie, as his iced tea and broccoli cheese soup are deposited in front of him.

“That he is,” says Bev. “A piece of shit who walks and talks and acts like he’s a man.” She stabs her fork into her alfredo with more force than strictly necessary, twists it around to gather up the noodles into a small ball. “But I don’t care, anymore, what he tries to do. I’m out. He can’t touch me anymore, that’s the important thing.”

Eddie nods, taking a sip of his soup. Then he pauses, looks down at it, and says, “Fuck, this is good.”

“_Really_,” says Bev, impressed. She takes a bite of her alfredo.

“Good thing I’m not lactose intolerant, huh,” says Eddie.

“You were never lactose intolerant,” says Bev. “Or allergic to anything. You and Richie rolled around in the grass way too many times, and you’re still alive.”

They fought a clown twice, but somehow Eddie’s still alive, and so are almost all of the Losers. Richie is—well, they’re working on it.

“I have no advice to give,” he says, a little apologetic. “You’re probably doing everything you can and then some to fuck him up.”

“I didn’t ask you here for advice, I asked you here for bitching,” says Beverly. “If I wanted advice I’d talk to my lawyers. Or Kay.”

“You got in touch with her?” Eddie asks, sitting up straight now. “That’s great!”

“Yeah, we got back in touch after the last time I was in Derry and I told her the good news,” says Bev. “I didn’t know how much I missed talking to her until I dialed her number. It’s been so _long_, I forgot how much we loved each other.”

“What’s she think about Ben?” Eddie asks.

“She ranted to him about accommodations for disabled people and he took notes down on a napkin,” says Bev. “She’s starting to like him.” She pauses for a moment, then says, “She’s a journalist and a true-crime podcaster now, you know. I told her a little about the other Losers, and when I got to Richie she told me that everyone she knew in the true crime circles was covering his disappearance for at least a couple of minutes in a side episode. Some are waiting until more information comes to light so they can fill an hour about his disappearance.”

Eddie’s stomach twists into an ugly knot at the thought of it. Yeah, okay, he’d known Richie’s disappearance would be sensational enough to warrant headlines and viral tweets and fucking true crime podcast episodes, but it’s so soon, it’s _too soon_. Don’t they know to stand off for a while, show some fucking respect?

Bev says, “I told her to back off on it. She won’t publish anything and she won’t ask me for any details, but she couldn’t make any promises about the rest.”

God, they don’t _know_, though. They don’t know Richie’s dead. They think he’s only missing, think that a mention of him will somehow bring him out of the woodwork, as though he’d only decided to go to rehab on the down-low after all.

Eddie says, “They couldn’t fucking wait?”

“It’s Hollywood,” says Bev. “They’ll move on to the next thing.”

“They haven’t—”

“No one with a podcast has bothered me or Ben about Richie, just about my divorce,” says Bev, reaching over to squeeze Eddie’s hand, a reassurance that Eddie hadn’t realized he sorely needed. “Bill, Mike and Audra are in Scotland, so they can’t get to them easily, between the distance and the time zones. No one but Kay knows about you, Stan or Patty, and she’s going to keep it that way.”

“It just,” Eddie starts, then stops. He drops his face into his hands and says, lowly, “People are going to make a fucking circus out of this, if they haven’t already.” Which is not the best way to phrase it, he realizes, seeing Beverly wincing at the word. “Sorry,” he says, quickly.

“It’s an apt word,” she says, giving a dismissive wave of her hand. “You’re right, people already are making a circus out of this. We bring Richie back, he’ll still have to lie low for a while so the press doesn’t descend on him the second he steps outside.”

“And you have a plan for that?” Eddie asks.

“Well, Audra does, she’s the one with the connections and the lack of current public scandal,” says Bev. “But even then, it’s still going to be a mess. It already _is_ a mess—you haven’t seen Twitter, you haven’t seen people puking up conspiracy theories about what happened to Richie on your timeline.”

Probably for the best, because Eddie’s grip tightens around his glass at the thought of it, of having to go on Twitter to see people who don’t even _know_ Richie speculating on where he’s gone, what he’s doing, why he’s disappeared. He wouldn’t be able to keep himself from exploding on them.

“I wish they’d fucking _wait_,” he says.

“Me too,” says Bev. She sips at her schnapps again, and says, “Hey, think about it this way, at least nobody’s gone to Derry yet. I’m a little surprised that you haven’t seen anyone new and suspicious and carrying a camera around town lately, actually.”

Eddie looks down at his iced tea. “I think the clown might’ve had something to do with that,” he says. “I think either Richie or It might be trying to keep people from really paying attention to the town, the same way it did all these years.”

“But we managed to keep our memories,” Bev points out. “People are talking more about Derry now when they didn’t even know the town’s name before.”

“And how many of them actually go into town?” Eddie asks. “You said it yourself, you’re surprised nobody’s come in with a camera. Or an entire fucking film crew.”

Bev sticks her fork into her alfredo, twists it around and gathers up the noodles into a small ball. Then she pulls it out, letting the ball dissolve back into a pile of pasta noodles. “Oh,” is all she says, but Eddie can see the gears turning in her head.

It’s only a theory that Eddie’s thrown out there, and not even one he thought about until just now, but now that he’s come up with it, he can’t quite believe he never saw it before. Derry is the murder capital of Maine, and there _should_ be film crews, there _should_ be podcasters, there _should_ be people descending on this sleepy little town out of morbid fascination. But there aren’t.

Because Richie’s there. Because, consciously or not, Richie’s playing a variation of the tricks It used to keep its hunting grounds all to itself. Eddie knows Richie well enough, though, he knows Richie’s probably not even consciously doing it.

Bev says, “So—Richie’s responsible?”

“Eh, kinda?” Eddie says, seesawing his hand back and forth. “I don’t think he knows he’s doing it. Else there’d be a lot less talk about Derry floating around.”

“Or,” says Bev, “he, or It, _can’t_ just snap his fingers and erase everyone’s memories again like It could before. Because Richie’s been digging his heels in and fighting back every step of the way.” She drums her manicured fingernails on the bar counter, tapping out a _rat-tat-tat-tat_ staccato against the solid wood. “And it’s hard work fighting against something that’s a part of you,” she says.

Oh, does Eddie know _that_ just a little too well. It’s hard to fight the old habits, hard to stop himself from reaching for an inhaler that’s not there and that he never needed. And that’s just the unconscious habits, formed by good old-fashioned mommy issues. Richie has a fucking monster clown from somewhere beyond reality itself taking up real estate in his head and trying very hard to turn him into the perfect host. It’s a testament to Richie’s stubbornness that It hasn’t succeeded just yet.

“It’s not a bad thing, for once,” says Eddie. “I don’t want to talk to anyone not a Loser about Richie, right now. I think if someone asked me I’d blow up on them.”

“Yeah, well, can’t have that,” says Bev. “But if you’re right, and Richie or It or _both_ are keeping people from coming to town to learn more—Richie might not even know this is happening, but _It_ would, and It, historically, never does things for our benefit, just its own.” She takes a sip of her drink, says, “If you’re right, then I think It’s trying to isolate its host. Make damn sure that Richie can’t go back.”

Eddie thinks, suddenly, of Richie’s manager casually dismissing his client’s disappearance, of the fact that no one from LA has tried to poke around in Derry when Richie must’ve said _something_ about where he was going. If he were in Richie’s shoes, and no one, not even the people paid to care about him, even bothered to come looking for him when he disappeared, he’s not sure he would’ve held out as long as Richie has.

“But then he called you,” says Bev. “He called, and you dropped everything to help him.”

“There wasn’t much to drop,” says Eddie.

“If there was,” says Bev, “would you have hesitated?”

“No,” says Eddie, immediately. It’s true. If he’d kept his job, if he’d kept his wife, the moment Richie asked for his help he would’ve dropped it all. Fuck, he still loves New York, as painful as living there had become, if it hadn’t been for Richie he probably would’ve stayed there. “No, I’d have come and stayed here anyway.”

Beverly drums her fingers on the countertop. “Richie knows that,” she says. “He was counting on that when he called you. But we have to assume that if Richie knows something, there’s a chance Pennywise does too.”

A cold chill runs up Eddie’s spine, at that thought. The memory bubbles up out of nowhere: Richie appearing in the backseat, and Eddie nearly careening into a telephone pole out of shock. Richie hadn’t realized he’d do that, but _It would_, Richie had said as much himself. The clown is well fucking aware Eddie’s not going to give up on Richie, that Eddie won’t leave so long as Richie’s still stuck in Derry, but take Eddie out of the picture somehow and…

Eddie’s not stupid. Richie had been willing to die for him. Take Eddie out and Richie’s in a world of trouble, even with the other Losers.

“Be _careful_,” says Beverly. “We know it’s Richie, and we know we can trust him. But you have to remember: Sarah Kersh knew she could trust her father, too.”

_And look what fucking happened to her_, goes unspoken.

Suddenly Eddie really wishes he’s not the one driving them back to Derry, because goddamn, does he need a fucking drink.

\--

Ben reads the foreman’s supplementary e-mail at one of Derry’s two Starbucks outlets. It’s business as usual: supplies are coming along fine, there’s been a fuck-up on somebody’s part during construction that’s set them back a little but it’s fixed now, everyone’s optimistic they’ll be done with this part of construction in time for Christmas. Oh, and Darrell’s kid, you know Darrell, his kid’s turning three next week, is Ben going to attend with his new girlfriend?

Ben writes up his answer in about ten minutes, mostly just polite noises and a couple recommendations over reprimands to make, and _I’ll ask her if she wants to come._ He sort of doubts it, Bev had once told him that she hated being her ex-husband’s arm candy at every party and that the man had kept forcing her into it, but if it’s just a kid’s birthday party she might be okay with it. Probably. If not, Ben will drop in and get her some pasta from the party, she has a thing for pasta.

He sends the response off, then takes a sip of his latte. There’s a contract he needs to sign off on, but something about the wording of some of the clauses on it’s raised his hackles, and he’s come to trust that if his hackles are raised it’s a good idea to get one of the lawyers to take a look at it and tell him if the firm’s getting screwed. And then after that he still needs to look over some promising applications HR’s sent his way. There’s a threat from Rogan in there too, but Ben dutifully forwards that to Bev’s lawyer. So the guy’s pissed Beverly’s making it hard for him to get away with shitty business practices and shitty behavior. Good. Means he knows his balls are in a vice and Bev’s tightening it.

“Ben Hanscom?” someone says.

“Yeah, that’s me,” says Ben, absently.

“Here’s the donut you wanted.”

Ben looks up to see a young waitress, maybe eighteen or so, probably taking this as a part-time job, and says, “I—didn’t order a donut, though?”

“A friend of yours said you liked them,” says the girl, with a shrug. “And he left a note.”

Ben’s breath catches in his throat. Most of his friends are outside Derry at this very moment, some an ocean away. He has only one friend in Derry, and that’s the one currently possessed by the clown’s murderous, vengeful ghost. “Oh,” he manages.

The girl deposits the tray and the note at his table, giving him an odd look. “You okay?” she asks, after a moment.

“I’m—fine,” says Ben, flashing her a smile he himself doesn’t entirely feel. She frowns at him, but leaves, and Ben lets the smile fall as he picks up the note with a shaking hand. Who wrote this one, he wonders: Richie or Pennywise?

His blood runs cold when he sees the newspaper clipping: an obituary. For _Richie_. **Richie Tozier, 1976-2016**, the headline blares, and underneath, _Died alone, forgotten, unsaved. He was a disappointment to his family and a coward to the end, who only told the truth when he thought he was going to die. His death is the punchline to the joke that was his life, and no one will remember him after the worms eat his filthy, dirty body. You didn’t save him then, what makes you think you can save him now?_

When a swarm of maggots and leeches bursts forth from the donut, Ben’s almost relieved. He jumps back with a curse, sure, but he scoops up his laptop before a maggot can land on it and dumps a generous amount of money on the table beside the rotting donut. “Thanks,” he says, hurriedly, and flees as fast as he can, not caring if he’ll get odd looks.

Jesus Christ, this fucking town just can’t wait before trying to kill him. Ben keeps walking briskly until he’s blocks away from that Starbucks, then he slows down till he finds a bench. Then he slumps into the bench, running his hand through his hair, heart still beating fast from the burst of adrenaline. Why the _maggots_, of all things, he wonders. He’s never felt very strongly about leeches and maggots, beyond a vague disgust whenever he sees them on TV, but that’s normal.

He looks around, half-expecting to see a young Beverly again, a cigarette in her hand, her hair aflame. Thank god, he doesn’t see her. Or Richie. Or the clown.

The note’s still in his hand, the obituary in stark black and white. Richie’s face grins up at him from the paper, but it’s a professional smile, the kind he busts out during his stand-up specials, the sort that never quite reach his eyes. Ben reads the obituary again, his heart dropping into his stomach. Oh, _Richie._

“Do you really think that, Rich?” he asks, not expecting an answer. “Because I don’t. You’ve never been a disappointment to us, to me. You were the funniest guy I knew, even if half the time you were taking potshots at Eddie’s mom.”

No answer. Ben looks down at the obituary, then huffs out a breath.

“Whatever the clown is telling you,” he says, quietly, “it’s lying. You’re not a coward, your life wasn’t a joke and your death was a tragedy. We haven’t forgotten you. _Eddie_ could never forget you.” Probably a low blow bringing Eddie up, Ben supposes, but then Eddie and Richie have always been weird about each other since the day Ben met them. “We love you,” he says.

No answer. He sighs, slumping back against the bench. What was he expecting? It’s not as if Richie can respond, he’s probably wrestling with It for control of his brain at the moment. He probably hasn’t even heard it, which just means Ben will say it again once Richie’s free and not worrying too much about the clown in his head.

He looks down at the obituary again, and his intestines squirm in discomfort as he reads the whole thing over. The thing is, It didn’t make things up out of whole cloth. It found its victims’ insecurities, dug in, and dragged them out, twisting them around to drive the fear home deeper.

“Do you really hate yourself so much, Richie?” Ben asks. “Did you really think we’d hate you? God, I’m sorry, Rich, if we made you think, at any time, that we’d hate you for not telling us. I _get it_, man, I get why you’d want to hide it. Bowers went after me too, and I would’ve done anything, _anything_ just to be able to hide all the—the fat. From him and everyone else.” He pauses, then huffs out a tired breath, folding the obituary up. “It’s nothing compared to what you went through, I know,” he says. “You or Mike. I was just a fat kid, Bowers was an outlier in how much he wanted me dead. You and Mike and Eddie—god, Rich. I’m sorry that you ever felt unsafe around us, that you felt like you _had_ to hide this part of you. We were never gonna be disappointed in you.” He tips his head back, looking up at the blue, cloudless sky, and says, “Losers stick together.”

Still no response. He looks down at the obituary, at Richie’s falsely smiling face. There are, he realizes, two red lines trailing down under his eyes, and the last line has changed: _He’ll float too. You’ll all float._

Ben clenches his fist. “Hey, clown,” he says, “we beat you once before, we can do it again. We’re gonna get our friend away from you, and then _we’re gonna fucking kill you_.” He crumples the obituary up and tosses it into the nearby trash can, unwilling to see Richie’s face change any more, unwilling to see what new taunts It might come up with.

God, he hopes Bill and Mike find what they’re looking for in Scotland soon.

\--

It’s freeing being out of Derry. The world is brighter outside of it, somehow cleaner, less bloody and fearful. Yes, okay, the world outside Derry is still a hot fucking mess, no one’s going to dispute that, Eddie is a _New Yorker_ and he _knows_ just how much of a hot mess the world outside Derry can be. But at least it’s an understandable mess, for the most part. At least you can chalk a significant percentage of it up to shit like good old human incompetence, or the banality of bureaucracy, or just a wild cascade of coincidences.

Derry had a serial killer clown abomination from outer space that held sway over the adults of the town. Eddie feels like that sort of defeats the drug-fueled, money-grubbing, casually-violent criminal underworld of New York City. Like—at least in New York if a kid goes missing the reasons are _simple_. In Derry the reason is almost always, _eaten by the clown that dwells in the sewers_.

Except there isn’t any clown anymore, just Richie, and Derry is—slowly getting better. Slowly. But the second Eddie drives back over the town line, a nebulous weight settles down over him, like a really itchy, heavy, too-warm blanket. Beverly, who’s sleeping in the front seat, stirs next to him, frowning—she feels it too.

Eddie’s hand drifts to where the arcade token is sitting under his clothes, the metal warmed by his skin. Richie’s still there, still himself, and Eddie knows it. Eddie has a feeling he’d know, if It decided to give up on this waiting game and simply kick Richie out of the driver’s seat.

Beverly stirs just as they’re passing over the bridge, blinks blearily at Eddie, and says, “Hey, remember when Bill told us a ghost story about this bridge?”

Eddie smiles at the memory, giddy nostalgia bubbling up like champagne bubbles. Oh, yes, he remembers. More specifically, he remembers clinging to Richie as Bill told the story, all of them enraptured by it. “Yeah, the one about the school bus that got swept away in a flood and the kids’ ghosts pushing stalled cars and bikes off the bridge,” he says. “I couldn’t go near the kissing bridge for a _week_. I don’t think Richie did either.”

“I know I didn’t,” says Bev. “It’s funny, I think he just made it up off the top of his head.”

“Bill always was a pretty good storyteller,” says Eddie. “No wonder he got into horror writing.”

“Yeah, no wonder,” says Bev, as they leave the bridge behind them. “You know, Ben told me once, the river had a history of sweeping things away in a flood before they started damming it up. It didn’t happen quite as often afterwards, but sometime during the fifties or so, there was this huge flood that overwhelmed the dam. About a third of the population had to evacuate.”

“Lemme guess, kids went missing?” Eddie asks.

“You’re right,” says Bev. “Not as many as there could’ve been, It was in hibernation. But I wouldn’t put it past It to wake up for a snack or two that happened to come by.”

Eddie drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “Do you think,” he says, after a moment, thinking of the ghost story, the flood, the dead kids, “that there’s a chance the dam will burst again any time soon?”

“I think that’s something Bill might know better than me,” Bev says, “since his dad used to work in the sanitation department.” She sits up straighter, and says, “But if you ask me, probably just a really slim chance. Even given the clown exacerbating the usual government incompetence, purposefully weakening the dam carries the risk of flooding out _too much_ of the town. Too many people dead means It loses its primary food source.”

“Oh, okay, that’s—good,” says Eddie, relaxing. He hadn’t even realized he’d tensed up, he really ought to work on this whole tension thing. “I mean, not _good_, good, because of Pennywise, but, y’know, good because the river won’t suddenly wash the bridge away or something any time soon.”

“Have you been worrying about that this whole time?” Beverly asks.

Eddie shakes his head. “Not until after you mentioned Bill’s old story,” he admits. “And then I just—I don’t know, I had a feeling.” He shrugs. “Probably just the old anxiety acting up,” he says, looking straight ahead. “I always meant to get that treated, but Xanax is so easy to get even without an official diagnosis of anxiety or anything that I just, y’know, didn’t.” And he had thought, hell, he’d knuckled under just fine for his college years, he could handle a couple of panic attacks in the bathroom.

Beverly says, “If you want, I can ask Kay if she knows someone you can talk to.”

“Yeah, that’d be nice,” says Eddie. “I mean, I’m not making any promises I’ll actually start seeing them, but—I’d like a card, at least. And maybe after we save Richie I can come in one time, just to get a feel for it.”

“It’d do you a lot of good,” says Bev. “It’s doing _wonders_ for me.”

“I thought that was the sex with someone willing to eat you out,” Eddie says.

“Well, partly, yes,” Bev allows, a corner of her mouth quirking upward. “That’s also a factor.”

“Knew it,” says Eddie, and drives on towards the townhouse.

\--

It’s as Bev is taking her smoke break outside, a courtesy to Eddie’s general distaste towards cigarettes, that Ben says, “Did you ever—Did you ever feel like you _had_ to hide a very important part of yourself, from us?”

Eddie blinks at him. Because Beverly usually likes to take her time smoking, Eddie’s recruited Ben into helping him do a general inspection of the townhouse, making sure it’s in line with safety codes and guidelines. Right now they’re checking the windows for any cracks and gaps, and so far the windows have passed both Ben’s professional standards and Eddie’s non-professional but highly stringent standards. “Uh,” is his intelligent response.

Ben looks at him, all kind concern and attention.

Eddie sighs. “Not really,” he says. “Wait, is this—do you want me to properly come out to you, because I don’t think I ever did.” He had simply gone from being single to being in a relationship with Richie, and because the Losers’ Club is a collection of fucked-up adults with a very strong trauma-based bond, they’d taken it in stride and accepted it. It’s nice having friends, Eddie decides. “I could do it right now,” he offers.

“I mean, sure, I’ll even pretend to be surprised,” says Ben. “But really, I was just—It, uh. Fucked with me a little today.”

Eddie’s blood freezes solidly in his veins. “It didn’t—” he starts.

“No, hey, don’t worry,” says Ben, his hand encircling Eddie’s elbow and squeezing lightly. “It didn’t try to hurt me. Scared me a little, but it backed off. I think Richie was holding it back.”

Eddie relaxes, then, but not all the way. “Okay,” he says, “okay.” Then he narrows his eyes. “Hold on, so why ask me if I ever felt like I couldn’t talk to you guys about something important to me?”

“It taunted me about Richie,” says Ben. “Said something about how he felt like a disappointment.” He sighs, then runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know, I just—sometimes I feel like we didn’t do enough,” he says. “To show him we’d love him no matter what, y’know?”

“We were _kids_,” says Eddie. “We were kids in the _eighties_, we were total shit at feelings. If anything fucked Richie up,” and he jabs Ben in the chest, “it was everyone _else_ in town saying shit about how—how being gay would fuck him up. I know it fucked me up, I barely even _thought_ about guys that way because—well, I don’t have to spell it out for you, right?”

“But you thought about Richie that way, right?” Ben points out. “I think I remember—we talked about it a little bit, but you were pretty vague and indirect. I thought it was a girl you were talking about.”

That’s—not false, Eddie realizes, because the memory is unburying itself from the graveyard of his childhood memories, playing out in his mind’s eye as clear as though it happened yesterday. “Yeah,” he says. “We did. And I—” He chokes back a laugh. “I borrowed your mom’s kitchen knife and carved his initial on the kissing bridge.”

“She wondered where that went,” says Ben. “Eddie—if I ever made you think you couldn’t tell me, I’m sorry.”

“Ben, trust me, it was _not_ you I was scared of,” says Eddie, fiercely, if a little manic about it. “You were like a fucking teddy bear. It’d be like being scared of Winnie the Pooh.”

Ben laughs, a little surprised. “Uh, thanks?”

“I’m not done,” says Eddie. “If Richie and I felt the need to hide, even from the Losers, that’s not on you or any of you, it’s because of Derry and the clown and the homophobic _bullshit_ we went through. The closet was the safest place we could be in and being in there fucked with us so badly we’re _still_ dealing with it thirty fucking years later!” He throws his hands up, and says, “So—no, personally I never felt like I had to hide anything from you guys because by default I just repressed the _shit_ out of it, because that was safe, because that was _easy_, easier than looking at it and engaging with it and coming out and—having to deal with the risk of, of not losing you guys but just, just setting up an even bigger target on my back for this shit-ass town!” He pauses, then says, “I still think it’s a shit-ass town, by the way. But Richie and the rest of you, you made it better. You _make_ it better.”

Ben watches him the whole time, his attention entirely on Eddie. The corners of his lips turn upward in a small, surprised smile. “Thanks,” he says. “I didn’t love this place, but I loved you guys, you know? More than anything.” He tucks his hands into the pockets of his jeans and says, “Do you realize how rare that is? We still all love each other.”

Oh, it is rare, Eddie knows that. He’s had casual friendships, he’s had close friendships (all the way back in college, that crucible of young adulthood), but he’s never had friends like the Losers. Ellie and Veronica were good friends, but they didn’t come _close_ to this—to how much Eddie just loves Ben, and Beverly smoking outside, and Bill and Mike in Scotland, and Stanley in Atlanta. And Richie—his very best friend, the man who’s had Eddie’s heart since they were kids.

“We do,” says Eddie. He looks back at the window, trying to see if there are any cracks in the frame that he needs to fill in, then looks back at Ben. “I knew from the start, okay? That love when we were kids—it’s the freest and best love I ever had. And I think I knew that I’d never lose it no matter what, it’s just, y’know, taken me a while to really remember.” He smiles back at Ben, and says, “You did enough. More than enough. The clown’s just a fucking asshole who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Ben’s smile fades, then, and he huffs out a breath. “Seemed like it was going off something,” he says.

The old fear twists Eddie’s intestines into guts, as the memory bubbles back up: of Richie, saying, _there’s a fucking monster clown that’s been fucking with my head._

What sort of damage could It do, Eddie wonders, with access to Richie’s deepest, darkest secrets? With access to how he thinks, what he believes, what he knows?

_A lot,_ comes the answer, and it sounds like Eddie’s own voice, but more self-assured somehow. _You’re on a clock here, Eds._

Outside, the rain’s starting to fall.


End file.
